NZEYIMANA Emery Fabrice

Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cell phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker-function and begins to talk.
Everyone else in the room stops to listen.

MAN: “Hello”

WOMAN: “Honey, it’s me. Are you at the club?”

MAN: “Yes”

WOMAN: “I’m at the mall now and found this beautiful leather coat. It’s only $1,000. Is it OK if I buy it?”

MAN: “Sure, go ahead if you like it that much.”

WOMAN: “I also stopped by the Mercedes dealership and saw the new 2005 models. I saw one I really liked.”

MAN: “How much?”

WOMAN: “$65,000.”

MAN: “OK, but for that price I want it with all the options.”

WOMAN: “Great! Oh, and one more thing…. The house we wanted last year is back on the market. They’re asking 950,000.”

MAN: “Well, then go ahead and give them an offer, but just offer $900,000.”

WOMAN: “OK. I’ll see you later! I love you!”

MAN: “Bye, I love you, too.”The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are looking at him in astonishment.

Then he smiles and asks: “Anyone knows whose phone is this?

Last year,
My friend upgraded his GirlFriend 3.1 to GirlFriendPlus1.0 (marketing name: Fiancee1.0).

Recently he upgraded Fiancee1.0 to Wife1.0, and it’s a memory hogger! It has taken all his space; and Wife1.0 must be running before he can do anything. Although he didn’t ask for them, Wife1.0 came with Plug-Ins such as MotherInLaw and BrotherInLaw. These too slow down the system and cause a slow drain on the resources and well-being of the computer.

Some features I’d like to see in the upcoming GirlFriend4.0:

1. A “Don’t remind me again” button.

2. Minimize button.

3. Shutdown feature – An install shield feature so that Girlfriend4.0 can be completely uninstalled if so desired (so you don’t lose cache and other objects).

I tried running Girlfriend 2.0 with Girlfriend 1.0 still installed; they tried using the same I/O port and conflicted. Then I tried to uninstall Girlfriend 1.0, but it didn’t have an uninstall program. I tried to uninstall it by hand, but it put files in my system directory.

Another thing that sucks–in all versions of Girlfriend that I’ve used is that it is totally “object orientated” and only supports hardware with gold plated contacts.

Bug warning
Wife 1.0 has an undocumented bug. If you try to install Mistress 1.1 before uninstalling Wife 1.0, Wife 1.0 will delete MSMoney files before doing the uninstall itself. Then Mistress 1.1 will refuse to install, claiming insufficient resources.

(Sent to me by Bona)

The latest measurements confirm that the world’s oil and natural gas supplies are running out too fast. At some time between 2010 and 2020 the world’s supply of oil and gas will fall below the level required to meet international demand.

The US government is aware that we are about to endure a disastrous international energy shortage. According to Dr James McKenzie, a senior member of the climate change programme at the World Resources Institute in Washington, USA: “That’s why we went to war in Iraq.”

We always knew the world’s oil reserves would run out eventually. The oil was formed by natural geological processes which occurred over millions of years. Oil consumption presently exceeds 25 billion barrels a year and demand continues to spiral upward, out of control. The outcome is inevitable.

In the 21st Century we rely on oil (petrol) and gas for transport – cars, lorries, ships, aircraft – as well as electrical power. We cannot survive without oil and gas, and when the supply runs out the great engine of Western civilization will finally grind to a halt. We are heading for an event that will be remembered as one of the great disasters of human history, and life is going to get harder for everybody as the day of reckoning draws nearer.

In the years ahead, wars will be fought over oil and fuel as the oil-dependent superpowers struggle in vein to preserve our unsustainable way of life. We are entering a period of great change and there are be difficult times ahead. The process has already begun. Students of prophecy will be familiar with certain relevant verses from Christian scripture concerning the signs of the end times (Matt. 24.8; Mk 13.8, Rom. 8.22; Rev. 12.03, 21.1-4). As it was translated in 1961 in the New English Bible: “With these things, the birth pangs of the new age begin” (Mt.24:8; Mk.13:8). Whether you are religious or secular, you should be aware that the tide of history is turning.

In North America, where we use far more oil than anywhere else on Earth, the vast majority (71%) of electrical power generation is entirely dependent on fossil fuels – coal (52%), gas (16%), and oil (3%). The world’s natural gas is running out along with the oil, and the coal supply is not unlimited either. Nuclear energy contributes only one-fifth to the US power network, and 7% of power is hydroelectric. Only 2% of US electricity production is from renewable sources. As we continue to burning up the world’s dwindling fossil energy sources at a terrifying rate, we simultaneously unleash catastrophic damage to the natural environment.

The Insider recently reported a wave of four major electrical power outages which struck the US; then the UK; followed by Denmark and Sweden; and then Italy, Switzerland, Austria and France. The effects only lasted a few hours, but each case was the biggest power failure in the history of the affected country. These massive power cuts were separated by a matter of days. The governments were only practicing this time. This is just the beginning.

It would be prudent to pursue alternative energy sources before it is too late, but the oil corporations will never allow this to happen. So important is oil as a resource that it brings great wealth and power to those who control it. Consequently, our corrupt politicians, whose power is lavishly funded with oil money, prefer to serve the short-term interests of greedy oil executives than the long-term interests of ordinary people like you. But as long as we have food in our bellies and entertainment to keep us busy, why should we care? Thus, it is the immorality and indifference of our species that ultimately leads to our own demise.

Nothing lasts forever. Like all the great civilizations in the past, ours has a limited life-span. A few years from now the Westernized world will reach the point where there is no longer enough fuel to sustain civilization in its present form. This will literally be the end of civilization as we know it.

http://www.theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=0423

Matt Asay’s recent comment that “open source is not a Silicon Valley phenomenon” has sparked a debate about the importance of location, and got me thinking about where open source software comes from. Meanwhile I stumbled upon the mylocalguru tool and before I knew it had created a Web 2.0 style mash up showing the location of some of the leading open source vendors.

The result, available here, plots the location of the vendors on a map of the world and shows a reasonable spread across Europe, Asia Pac and North America.

You can also drill down on the various geographical areas for a more detailed view. Europe is here, Asia Pac here, and North America here.

The latter map shows how important the East coast of America has been in terms of the growth of open source in the US, but does not allow for the density of vendors in Silicon Valley. As can be seen by focusing closer on California, (enterprise) open source is now very much a Silicon Valley phenomenon.

What this map does not take into account, of course, is where the individual developers are based – it is a representation of enterprise open source providers, as opposed to open source developers – and it would be interesting to see how different that map would look (if it were possible to create one).

I’ll admit that the map itself doesn’t really tell us much – but it’s a work in progress and hey, it’s a Web 2.0 mash up, it’s meant to be vague, self-fulfilling and of questionable real-world value. If you are interested in how it was done, the background data is here.

As to the question of whether it matters where an open source provider is based, I’m reminded of this quote from the excellent Australian film, The Castle, about a family living in a house at the end of a runway:

“As the real estate agent said… location location location, and we’re right next door to the airport. It will be very convenient if we have to fly one day.”

http://www.businessreviewonline.com/os/archives/2006/07/where_in_the_wo.html

I have decided to try and write a Flex library that will be used to connect Flex applications to MySQL natively.

Some of the current approches include consuming XML documents produced by other languages like PHP, JAVA and others.

I will make it expose methods like those found in MySQL Connector/NET.

The main motivation is to reduce the languages used in a single application (or package) and gaining more speed (not 100% sure on this though). Also I hope to gain more knowledge on Flex and ActionScript 3.

While using Connector/.NET to connect to MySQL I prefer accessing the DataReader fields using their names.

Like

[code lang="C#"]
string sCustomerName = dbReader.GetString("CustomerName") ;
int nSomeIntegerVariable = dbReader.GetInt32("AnIntegerField"); [/code]

I love doing it this way because I can reorder my columns without having to change the access code.

With the current connector, one should retreive the field Index (using the GetOrdinal() Method) and pass that ordinal (Index) to one of the accessors to get the value of the column.
I have been doing that but I found it cumbersome and decided to add some methods in the DataReader Class definition.

The methods I added are:
[code lang="C#"]
public bool GetBoolean(String name)
public byte GetByte(String name)
public long GetBytes(String name, long dataIndex, byte[] buffer, int bufferIndex, int length)
public char GetChar(String name)
public long GetChars(String name, long fieldOffset, char[] buffer, int bufferoffset, int length)
public String GetDataTypeName(String name)
public MySqlDateTime GetMySqlDateTime(String name)
public DateTime GetDateTime(String name)
public Decimal GetDecimal(String name)
public double GetDouble(String name)
public Type GetFieldType(String name)
public float GetFloat(String name)
public Guid GetGuid(String name)
public Int16 GetInt16(String name)
public Int32 GetInt32(String name)
public Int64 GetInt64(String name)
public String GetString(String name)
public TimeSpan GetTimeSpan(String name)
public object GetValue(String name)
public UInt16 GetUInt16(String name)
public UInt32 GetUInt32(String name)
public UInt64 GetUInt64(String name)
public bool IsDBNull(String name)[/code]

In the XML comments of each of these methods I added a line saying that
ordinal based lookups are faster.

The modified file can be accessed at
/dev/mysql/net/mysqlclient/datareader.cs
For those who won’t re-build the connector themselves I have also uploadead
a binary at
/dev/mysql/net/bin/net-2.0/Release/MySql.Data.dll

Sweden’s Supreme Court has told a woman that she cannot adopt her own biological daughter, who was born to a surrogate mother.

The woman and her then partner were childless, so enlisted the man’s sister as a surrogate. As surrogacy is not allowed in Sweden, the woman’s fertilised egg was implanted in the surrogate mother in Finland.
When the girl was born in 2002 the man was named father but the woman had to apply for adoption, the Juridik news service reports.

The adoption was approved by the district court, but after the couple separated the man appealed the court’s decision. The Svea Court of Appeal in Stockholm decided that the adoption could not be allowed without the father’s consent, and overturned the district court’s decision.

The woman appealed to the Supreme Court, which has now also said no to the adoption.

The Supreme Court referred to a case from 1973 in which it was ruled that a decision over an adoption can be reversed if one of the parents withdraws consent.

Two judges dissented from the Supreme Court’s decision, arguing that the genetic mother should be allowed to adopt the child.

The girl, who is now 4, has until now lived with her genetic mother and father. The Supreme Court ruling means the man and his sister become the child’s legal parents.

TT/The Local