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Acid test is a phrase that can also refer to a foolproof test that will accurately determine the validity of something. The origins come from the gold rush in the United States. Gold does not react to most acids (unlike most metals) but does to nitric acid. The acid test was then used to confirm if gold was indeed found.^[1]

Transactions provide several important properties, referred to as the ACID properties: ^[2]

• Atomicity:
  A transaction is either successful or unsuccessful. Either all of the operations that make up a transaction take effect or none take effect. A successful transaction is said to commit. An unsuccessful transaction is said to abort. Any operations performed by an aborted transaction are undone (rolled back) so that its effects are not visible.
• Consistency:
  A transaction transforms distributed data from one consistent state to another. The application program is responsible for ensuring consistency.
• Isolation:
  Each transaction appears to run independently of other transactions that are running concurrently. The effects of a transaction are not visible to others until the transaction completes (commits or aborts). The transactions appear to be serialized, with two or more transactions acting as though one completed before the other began, even though they are executed concurrently.
• Durability:
  Also known as permanence, this property ensures that once completed, the effects of a transaction are permanent. A subsequent failure (such as abnormal program termination, communications failure, or hardware failure) does not cause the effects to be undone. Transactions are often used to control and moderate access to a centralized database. Typical uses for transaction processing systems include database-oriented applications such as airline reservation systems and automatic bank-teller machines.

[1] From Wikipedia
[2] Red Hat Web Application Framework Developer Guide

vi geeks (Emacs is ok too I guess....) this is tooooooooooo cool! For
those of us that actually remember how to do things before the
invention of the mouse this modification is for you in Firefox! The
following procedure will add keybindings that simulate vi navigation
movements such as the j and k keys.

1. For versions following 1.0.5 the platformHTMLBindings.xml
   file has moved inside the $firefox_home/chrome/toolkit.jar
   (content/global/platformHTMLBindings.xml within the JAR file).
• You'll need to extract the existing file from the archive,
  modify it, then update the archive.
• The simplest way to modify the file is to move the jar file
  into a working directory, unpack it, modify the file, the repack it
  into the jar. Suggest that you also make a backup of the original toolkit.jar file while you are at it.
2. Move the JAR file to a working directory:
   

   cd $MOZILLA_HOME/chrome/ cp toolkit.jar $WORKING_DIRECTORY cd $WORKING_DIRECTORY

3. Unpack the JAR file with the Java Archive Utility:
   

   jar -xf toolkit.jar

4. Modify the file which will now be located at

   $WORKING_DIRECTORY/content/global/platformHTMLBindings.xml

   Add the entries listed below as children of the <binding id="browser"><handlers> element:

   <handler event="keypress" key="k"command="cmd_scrollLineUp"/> <handler event="keypress" key="j" command="cmd_scrollLineDown"/> <handler event="keypress" key="l" command="cmd_scrollRight"/> <handler event="keypress" key="h" command="cmd_scrollLeft"/>

5. Repack the JAR file:
   

   cd $WORKING_DIRECTORY jar -cf toolkit.jar content/

6. Copy the new JAR file back.
7. Restart the browser and get away from the dreaded Carpal Tunnel
   syndrome!

NOTE: If you have turned on the Advanced Firefox
option "Begin finding when you being typing" this should
be turned off. By typing a /
character you can start a search for any text on the page and by typing
a ' character you can start a
search for any link on a page. For more info refer to the Firefox
Keyboard Shortcuts page.

CREDITS
I believe that this is the first page that has been updated to
accomplish this task for vi navigation on Firefox versions after 1.0.5 (HINT:
If you are using a version of Firefox before 1.0.6 YOU ARE NOT
PRACTICING SAFE BROWSING). The instructions provided here were
based on instructions for earlier versions of Firefox gathered from the
following pages:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Emacs_Keybindings_(Firefox)
• http://legonet.org/~griffin/firefox_vi-bindings.html

Google Labs is still coming out with great stuff. Google
Alerts is worth a look.

http://www.google.com/alerts

The alerts give you targeted search results in an e-mail based on your
choice of query. The results are e-mailed to you based on a schedule
you select. It is a good way of keeping current on a particular
industry or topic. The query can search either the Google news site or
their web search with an additional option to search both.

A nice enhancement to this service would be creating an RSS or ATOM
feed for the results instead of sending it via e-mail.