My intention is to use the new Microsoft OLE DB Driver for SQL Server (msoledbsql) for database connection in Delphi 5 if it is installed in the system. If it is not installed than I am using old driver (sqloledb). My question is: What would be the proper way to check for the driver installed in the system? I guess it has somethink to do with Registry check and also some dlls existing in the folder. I know how to chek for dlls but I am not sure about the Registry.
How can I make sure that a certain OLEDB driver is installed when I start my application? I use ADO from Delphi and would like to display a descriptive error message if the driver is missing. The error that's returned from ADO isn't always that user-friendly.  There are probably a nice little function that returns all installed drivers but I haven't found it.
Would the One Ring even work for anyone but Sauron? The temptation of the One Ring, we quickly learn, is always tied up with power: each character's fantasies of possessing it seem to be about what they would do with great power. Even Sam, as I recall, imagines the power to create great huge sweeping gardens. Boromir wants the power to save Gondor, etc.  But does the One Ring actually convey power to anyone but Sauron? It actually seems to diminish its bearers: Bilbo feels "thin" and "stretched", Sméagol becomes the wretched Gollum, Frodo is never quite the same even after it is destroyed. None of them seem more "powerful," even in the abstract way that magic-users in Tolkien operate. No mention is made, that I can recall, of a Ringbearer having greater stature or authority, or of people naturally following them or obeying their commands, while they possess the Ring.  The accepted answer to  implies that a being as powerful as Gandalf could dominate the Ring and break Sauron's hold over it, but even then Tolkien says that "It would have been the master in the end", and his descriptions of a Ringbearing Gandalf sound pretty much like Gandalf is using his own powers, not terribly augmented by the Ring:     [Gandalf] would have remained 'righteous', but self-righteous. He would have continued to rule and order things for 'good', and the benefit of his subjects according to his wisdom (which was and would have remained great).   Now that sounds out of character for a being as humble as Gandalf, but it doesn't actually sound like something he would have been unable to do before. It's a twisted motive, but not really an enhanced power.  Pretty much everyone in Middle-earth agrees that the One Ring will corrupt you, but they all seem to agree that it DOES convey great power even so. Why? Do we ever see any actual, "positive" effects from possessing the One Ring? Time limit on accepting an answer Why is there a 15 minute time limit on accepting an answer in StackOverflow? I would really like to see all of my questions and answers on the profile page, even if some of them were deleted, and I don't have enough rep to see them on the site. (Note that some questions are  after 30 days or 1 year, and the author might be oblivious about what happened.)   , the &quot;deleted recent [questions/answers]&quot; links in one's own user profile now list all respective posts that were deleted in the past 60 days, rather than just those that were originally posted in the last 60 days. , users with the &quot;access to moderator tools&quot; privilege (10k+ on designed sites, 2k+ on beta and non-designed sites) can use the search operator deleted:1 to see all their own deleted posts. , deleted questions and answers that were posted in the past 60 days, can be seen using the &quot;deleted recent questions&quot; and &quot;deleted recent answers&quot; links on the questions and answers tabs (at the bottom of the tab) in your user profile. For older posts: as of 2013-04-23 you can  if you already have a link to them, but they still aren't linked from the user profiles (not even just for you). Nor do you see inbox notifications for comments on them if you come back a few hours later. You have to have thought to bookmark your question, or you have to go digging for it in your browser history. read.csv warning 'EOF within quoted string' prevents complete reading of file Restoring open software after a restart event in windows I find that at the end of a long day, I sometimes have a large number of programs running. All which I will need to use tomorrow. Normally, this isn't an issue, I can simply lock the machine and come back tomorrow. My problem arrises when windows update launches in the middle of the night and force restarts my computer. That in turns closes all my open software. I of course save everything regularly so I don't loose anything, but I waste time reopening all of those resources whenever there is a restart.   [EDIT]  I should clarify that I still want to be able to restart my computer when an update comes down. Preventing the restart only delays the problem until later. I should have been more specific in that I want to be able to recover my working environment after a restart for any reason. Things like scheduled maintence, power loss, updates, and software installs.  [EDIT]  I can't simply have them setup to launch at startup becasuse those files change from week to week. So I need something that monitors what I have open, and gives me the option to "recover" those software sessions when I log back in.  Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do? I'd even be willing to purchase software to do this for me if that is the only option.  Thanks Subfiles failing with custom class At what speed does our universe expand? Let $R=\mathbb{Z}\left[\sqrt{−5}\right]$. Let $I=\left(2,1+\sqrt{−5}\right)$. Show $I^2 = (2)$ in $R$. I don't know how to solve this problem. I tried to write out the sum of products in the definition of products of ideals, but that doesn't seem to lead anywhere. How do you specify the FQDN (Host and Domain Name) that a mail server presents itself as in HELO/EHLO when sending outgoing email with sendmail? How symbol lookup actually works Can anyone identify this 90s teen-fantasy series, gems in backbone, big magic, evil king? I have an associative array in the form key =&gt; value where key is a numerical value, however it is not a sequential numerical value. The key is actually an ID number and the value is a count. This is fine for most instances, however I want a function that gets the human-readable name of the array and uses that for the key, without changing the value.  I didn't see a function that does this, but I'm assuming I need to provide the old key and new key (both of which I have) and transform the array. Is there an efficient way of doing this? The Raspberry Pi B+ models have a protection circuit between the USB connector and the 5V net on the board.  They recommend putting a similar protection circuity on a Pi HAT before 'backpowering' the pi through its GPIO header along with a polyfuse.  I understand why this is the recommendation, but I'd like to understand more about how this circuit works.  I did some searching before posting this question and found information on using a MOSFET as a low voltage drop diode, but they all had the gate wired directly to ground without the pair of PNP's and the resistors.  What are they doing for this circuit?  Also, is this primarily using the body diode?  In which case, what's the relevant info on the datasheet that qualifies DMG2305UX for this application?  In the other circuits I found, it appeared low Rdson and Vgsth compatible with the circuit seemed like the relevant characteristics. How can I sync the new "people" (face recognition) metadata across devices in Photos (iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra)? The new Photos updates for iOS 10 and MacOS Sierra includes a much more powerful and integrated approach to organizing photos by who's in them.  It's built around powerful, on-device facial recognition.  But once it does its automated thing (finding the faces it thinks are the same person), there's still a lot of manual merging and labeling to be done if you have a lot of photos and are as obsessive about organization as I am.  For example, if you have, say... three thousand photos of your daughter, Photos will find almost all of them, but may guess they're 5 or 6 different people.  So you have to merge the buckets that all are one person, assign them a name (so you can search by it), etc.  But unlike other changes (edits, deletions, organization into albums, etc.), manual changes to "people" data don't seem to sync at all by default.      Is there really no way to do this?  It seems bizarre that one of the flagship features Apple's touting in this Photos update doesn't play at all with what was Photos primary selling point over iPhoto - everything synced on all your devices. Show images related to features in QGIS? Say for example, if there's a point data with old trees, then when you use the identify tool, you can see the photograph of the tree  Or even one level further, the labels displaying these images right away without any clicking needed  I believe the term is file streaming? Problem using wildcard with apt When I run this command :  apt install libkf5*   I get the following error :  Unable to locate package libkf5*    I'm sure that the packages whose names start with libkf5 exist (tab-completion says so) . So the problem is not about the absence of those packages.(Note the asterisk at the end of that error message , the wildcard's not working at all) I use apt v.1.9. Thanks in advance. Why do I have blurred vision and how do I fix it? euler's theorem of homogeneuos function suppose that $f$ is a mapping from $\mathbb R^n \to \mathbb R$.  a positively homogeneous of degree $n$ and suppose $f_1, f_2, .... f_N$ are continuous for $a \neq 0$. then   $$\sum_{i=1}^n a_if_i(a)= n*f(a)$$   now, they asked me to prove this. (Which is a total no no to me)  I write my proof as;  $f$ is a mapping from $\mathbb R^n \to \mathbb R$  A homogeneous function of degree $n$ if for all $a \in \mathbb R^n$ and all $L&gt;0$, $f(La)=L^n\,f(a)$. let $a \in \mathbb R^n$ and define function $g$ be a mapping from $[0,\infty) \to \mathbb R$. so I write $g(L) = f(La)-L^nf(a)$. then $L≥0$ let $L=0$ then, $g(L)=0$ and therefore $g'(x) =0$?  then i don't know what's goes next. can anyone help me about this? How to prove useful property of logarithm of generating functional in QFT? How to prove that $\ln(Z(J))$ generates only? I can't find the proof of this statement, and have only met its demonstrations for case of 2- and 4-point. How to get access to USB-storage from an application installed as Snap? I have Ubuntu 18.04 LTS installed. I inserted USB-flash to my laptop. It was automounted to /media/username/DISKLABEL and opened in Nautilus. I can read and write objects to it. How can I access it from the application, which is installed as Snap? I tried snaps of the following applications such as gedit, arduino-mhall119, organize-my-files. All them show me errors if I navigate to /media folder:    Could not read the contents of Media Error opening the directory of '/media': permission denied  Output of active Snap  is below: $ snap interfaces  | grep -v &quot;.*-$&quot; Slot                             Plug :browser-support                 organize-my-files :core-support                    core:core-support-plug :cups-control                    gedit :desktop                         gedit,organize-my-files :desktop-legacy                  gedit,organize-my-files :gsettings                       gedit,organize-my-files :home                            arduino-mhall119,gedit,organize-my-files :network                         arduino-mhall119,gedit,organize-my-files,pulsemixer :opengl                          organize-my-files :pulseaudio                      organize-my-files,pulsemixer :unity7                          arduino-mhall119,gedit,organize-my-files :wayland                         gedit :x11                             arduino-mhall119,organize-my-files,pulsemixer gnome-3-26-1604:gnome-3-26-1604  gedit gtk-common-themes:gtk3-themes    gedit gtk-common-themes:icon-themes    gedit gtk-common-themes:sound-themes   gedit -                                arduino-mhall119:serial-port -                                gedit:avahi-observe -                                gedit:mount-observe  Updates:  connecting mount-observe to Gedit with snap connect gedit:mount-observe does not help. it seems that we need special Snap with support of  interface.