Graham Smith

And that's the problem with writing rules, you have to be either specific enough to prevent misunderstandings or general enough to include the kitchen sink. In the rule quoted, examples are given as to what is prohibited. Those examples are specific to firearms, firearm replicas and firearm parts and accessories. Yes, those are just examples and the list not all inclusive, but anything else that might be put into the excluded list should be enough like the examples that a reasonable or knowledgeable person could make the connection. If you start tossing dissimilar things into the list then all you do is create the kind of problem we see here. A camera, particularly one that is mounted so that it doesn't have to be held, is nothing like a firearm. And let me add that I have, in the past, walked through stages prior to the start of the match with a video camera. I've mainly done this with stages I have designed, but not exclusively. Since this rule refers to the walk through, it doesn't preclude doing this. It also doesn't preclude taking notes or making sketches or half a dozen other things.

Missed that, but the rule is still specific enough regarding "...the whole or part of an imitation or replica firearm, any part of a real firearm including any accessories thereof...". A camera is not a part or an imitation of a part of a firearm. If you really stretch it, you may equate looking through the viewfinder to look through a rifle scope, but that's taking it well past reasonable.

I figured it out based on other peoples comments but not everyone knows that. One of the traps we are falling into here is that some things are done by and for the "insiders club". IOW we know what it means but others may not. It's not a big thing, just pointing out something to be aware of.

It's not a big bother to start another one, but as a database designer, I'm used to being able to clear things out of one file (i.e. delete all registrations) and start over with just tap of a button. Just thought I'd ask. Just out of curiosity, I may try and do this from the back end just to see what happens. If it doesn't work, I can always start over.

Our June match got rained out the morning of the match, so all the pre-registrations were in EZWS. I was wondering if there was a way to flush out the registrations and start over. I don't think it can be done but it's worth asking.

We also don't squad or sort the Nooks. We still carry printed score sheets that get updated with the stage score totals and they work great for sorting the shooters into an order and knowing who is up next.

Zack, not trying to pick nits here but... I'm assuming that what you listed in the original post were fixes, but at a quick glance there's no way to tell if they are fixes, known bugs, or reported bugs.

I would definitely have questioned that. The wording of 8.7.2 in the Feb 2014 book is, "Competitors are prohibited from using any guns or gun replicas as sighting aids while conducting their inspection..." It's hard to see how the definition of "sighting aid" as used in this rule can be expanded to include a camera.

A lot depends on whether you want a 7" or 10" tablet. If you are a member of Amazon Prime (or want to be) then you might want to consider a Kindle Fire. They do have their limitations when it comes to apps but they have a lot to offer as well and many reviews put them well above the Nexus. If not then I tend to agree with Bill that a Nexus is a reasonable choice. I have an ASUS Transformer T100 (Win 8) that I am experimenting with to see how far I can push it. I'm making some progress but it's such a change from what I am used to with Win 7 (and before) that's it's taking some time to wrap my head around it and stop making stupid assumptions about how to do things. If you are considering any kind of Windows tablet, have a look at the thread I started on the ASUS for some cautions.

Um... I can still see you. I'd ask for my money back if I were you.

Regarding the thread title. Here is a place to start: http://coalitionforabettercommunity.org/default.asp?iId=GDDDGG Or just fall back on the Golden Rule.

I have a wireless mouse that uses a dongle but USB ports are at a premium on a tablet and I'd rather have a Bluetooth mouse than a USB mouse and perhaps a hub or USB squid as well. Of course, if I'm using the Targus dock I have then it doesn't matter - I'm using a wired mouse with that now. The goal here is to see if this will work as a true hybrid in 4 or 5 configurations. Tablet alone; tablet with keyboard/trackpad; tablet, keyboard, and mouse, docked tablet with mouse, full size keyboard, monitor, and network connection.

This whole business is just sad. I know that some people take this sport more seriously than others, but I never expected to see something like this.

Speaking of Bluetooth Mice, anyone have any suggestions (other than the Apple Magic Mouse)? There don't seem to be a lot of good choices and a lot of them are pretty darn expensive.

Just out of curiosity, is anyone using Win 8 on a tablet of any kind? Is it RT, 8.1 or Pro? Here's another thing that I have found out. I knew that the ASUS (and likely most ATOM tablets) come with either Win 8 RT or "Home" rather than Pro. Pro adds full network and domain support plus virtual drives and a few other high end things which would up the price. But what I didn't know is that the "Home" version (I wish they would put that back in the damn name) is locked down in a number of ways that could hinder it's use as a desktop replacment. Any how, the first one to bite me about this is that Home lacks access to a Policy Editor, which keeps me from adding in a couple security items and also keeps me from moving my profile to an SD card to save space on the main memory. For the average user, this may not be a big thing but it could hinder my experiment of setting this up as a "workstation replacement". Mainly, what it makes me do is rethink my approach, which is probably a good thing. Still, I have to keep reminding myself, that I got this for about less than half of what a Pro tablet would cost. Less, in fact, than a MS Surface 2 RT (on sale) with the same memory and no keyboard. This is mainly about figuring out what I can accomplish on a tablet. Which brings me to another interesting point... I had a Kindle Fire when it first came out and the 7" screen was fine for a lot of things but too small for others. But there are a lot of tablets this size, including a few running Windows. A 10"-11" screen seems to be much better in general, although it's still a little small to "work" on and some web pages can be hard on old eyes. But 10"-11" seems to be about the largest you can go in a tablet and still have it be handy as a tablet. A 10" diagonal screen is about the size of a trade paperback (half sheet, like the USPSA rule book) which is a really comfortable size for most people to read and to hold in one hand. Any larger and it starts to get bulky. But this has always been an issue when it comes to balancing portability vs utility.

Let me rephrase this. An iPad that hasn't been hacked doesn't support a mouse. And we really aren't talking about iPads anyway.

iPads don't have mouse support.

Here is one observation I've not seen elsewhere. Running a Metro app and running a regular Windows program are different in one major respect that I'm just seeing. The Metro apps are intended to be run on a tablet and are generally scaled accordingly. Windows aren't and may be hard to scale correctly and may require either an external monitor or real good eyes. Got to do more reading about this.

The main problem with Windows is the f&^*ing Registry; with the Master File Tables running a close second. These both get so cluttered up with time that it's no wonder things slow down.

I didn't have a lot of time to work with this over the weekend, but I thought I'd provide some commentary as I worked through some things. First on the hardware side. For a little Atom processor, this thing is quite perky. I do have some concerns that, being Windoze, it's going to slow down over time, but I'll get to that in the software side. There is a microUSB port on the tablet that can be used to charge or as a USB 3.0 port - but not both. I thought at one point I was going to be able to make it do both using a powered hub but it doesn't seem to work that way. Pity. The keyboard/dock is small but it's no worse than others I've seen. It has a USB 2.0 port and I've been able to connect a Tarus Universal Docking station to that just fine. The dock has 4 USB ports, a network port, an HDMI port, and a digital display port. I don't have a spare monitor handy right now but I will in a couple weeks. That will allow me to setup a little workstation with keyboard, mouse, and monitor. The tablet also has Bluetooth so I can use a Bluetooth mouse and keyboard if I want as well. The tablet has a microSD port and I picked up a high-speed 64GB card for it. I'm taking it slow right now, but I'll probably be moving my user folders to that rather than leaving them on the main unit. I can also connect up an external drive to the dock that will have programs and data that I would only want to use when docked. I'm getting most of this info from others on the InterWeb who are finding ways to use the tablet as is when undocked and as a regular computer when docked. Still some logistics to sort out but I'm not in any rush. Now, about Windows 8... I can see what the designers had in mind and it's not all bad. But their big mistake was in trying to make the whole thing touch-centric - BIG mistake. One of the few few strengths of Win8 or Win7 is it's ability to be both a tablet platform and a workstation platform using the same hardware. In trying to make the user interface simpler and more consistent, they actually made it somewhat more complicated. More complicated because can now be less simple to setup programs. Once I learn better how to use the interface and create groups and shortcuts, I'll be more comfortable. Then there's "The Cloud". Everything now expects you to use the internet for data storage. That seems to be the main strategy behind justifying the smaller on-board storage. I happen to have already been using DropBox as a simple way of keeping stuff available for multiple computers, but I'm now faced with Microsoft wanting me to use SkyDrive and ASUS wanting me to use their WebStorage. The reasons are simple - they want you to become dependent on them so you will pay your monthly fees when the generous trial period runs out. The two long term things that concern me most right now is the tendency of Windows to accumulate crap and slow down. It's a problem they have always had and have been able to ignore as long as there was a lot of disk space and memory and a public that wanted a new, clean, computer every 2-3 years. Not sure that strategy is going to work so well with the Win8 Hybrids. We will see.

As a programmer myself, I'd like to also ask that we slow things down just a bit and focus on the immediate requirements. We are rapidly getting into the kind of feature creep that can drown a project like this. The more advanced users are always asking for things that are well beyond the scope of what's needed for the 80% of users. As a result, some things can get left behind and additional issues (problems) can be introduced. I always warn customers of this and tell them that the first 80% of a job is going to take 80% of the available time and resources, but the remaining 20% is likely going to take another 80% of the available time and resources.

I've got some mad money left over from an unexpected job last month and have decided to get one. I want to play with it and see just how far I can push this as a laptop replacement. I've read a few articles about doing this and I think that I have everything I need to test it out. One thing that the Windows tablets have going for them is that they work with a mouse. I've tried using an iPad to do work on and the lack of a mouse just drives me crazy. If it works, then I may start thinking about a better hybrid tablet, like the Dell Venue 11. Just what I need - another f*ing project to waste time on. <sigh>

The start menu is back and has always been there in the full version of Win8. The RT version won't have it and can't because it can't run non-Metro apps. MS made a HUGE mistake when it assembled the team to do Win8. Their goal was to make a tablet centric version of Windows, which is what Win8 RT is. But while the team that did the Windows Phone basically got it right, the team that did RT got it wrong. And what they mainly got wrong was the name - calling it Windows 8 basically confused the hell out of the buying public. This was exactly the same mistake they have made in the past and failed to learn from. Anyway, there's a whole new team in charge of the whole thing now and they are actually starting to make some progress. And one of the things that they have done is to make fix a couple big problems which makes devices like the Transformer and other Hybrid tablets work well. They can actually now run Metro-RT apps along side regular apps. This is important because in many cases, the Metro apps have some distinct advantages over traditional apps. I don't expect RT to go away, but I rather expect to see some marketing work done. And the first thing that MS needs to do is create a bigger branding difference between the RT and regular versions of the Surface - calling it the Surface and Surface Pro is the same boneheaded marketing that helped get them into this mess in the first place.

This whole Win8 vs Win8 RT (aka Metro) has caused no end of confusion in the market place. You have to be very careful when looking at any Windows Tablet to see what it has installed. When the ASUS Transformer came out, I thought it only had RT and even advised a friend away from it. That mistake was largely due to the price - it seemed too low for the full version of Windows.

The lower priced Surface tablets only run Win8 RT. I need something that can run the full version of Win8.1 (that can run "regular" Windows programs). The Surface Pro 2 starts around $900.