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Domain: qmul.ac.uk

Stories and comments across the archive that link to qmul.ac.uk.

Comments · 25

  1. TFA: by Kiyyik · · Score: 5, Informative · on UK Researchers Find IPv6-Related Data Leaks In 11 of 14 VPN Providers

    http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~ha...

    (Since there doesn't seem to be a link).

    Basically, the table on page 3 is probably where you want to start looking. TorGuard, PrivateInternetAccess, VyperVPN & Mullvad are proof against IPv6 leakage, so it's actually 10 of 14 that aren't.

    Also, they found Astrill is proof against OpenVPN and PPTP/L2TP DNS hijacking. Interesting read.

  2. Re:In Other ( Two ) Words: ( +1, Helpful ) by buchner.johannes · · Score: 1 · on Bees Beat Machines At 'Traveling Salesman' Problem

    I doubt the bees find a global optimum in all cases. The bees are, like other biology-inspired algorithms like ant-colony optimization, "only" doing a heuristic or approximation.
    It is unfair to compare it to a global optimizer; compare it to equivalent heuristics, e.g. greedy algorithms run in milliseconds rather than days.

    Nevertheless, that is not the point of the article I guess. It is the fact that algorithms happen in nature, and are very effective. Also, the appreciation that such a development happened/happens.

    The article is actually pretty decent: http://www.qmul.ac.uk/media/news/items/se/38864.html

  3. Re:Perfect example by burnin1965 · · Score: 3, Insightful · on IBM Pushing Microsoft-Free Desktops

    'also run'

    Hmm, and who was the winner in this race they ran?

    Based on IBM's income statement they are fast approaching $100 billion in annual revenue. To put this into perspective Exxon Mobile, that company that has made the news by making record profits for any company ever by gouging consumers, is a $116 billion in revenue corporation.

    And how can it be they are an 'also ran' and yet they are continually on the leading edge of many technological breakthroughs.

  4. Re:Ciguatera is Common knowledge by Otter · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Fish Poison Makes Hot Feel Cold and Vice Versa
    It's been known to Europeans for hundreds of years, and presumably to natives for much longer. (I had a very mild case in Belize a few years ago, from a barracuda.)

    Incidentally, for those wondering why the synthesis of this is newsworthy, check out the structures of this and similar marine toxins. The synthesis of palytoxin, at the bottom, supposedly sent a number of grad students and postdocs to the hospital, as its intermediates are also insanely toxic.

  5. The fraud that is the illegality of Cannabis by Scrameustache · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Judge Voids Un-Auditable California Election

    It is now illegal to eat pot in the USA because (I kid you not) smoking tobacco causes cancer. Documentation please... See this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_rescheduling_in_the_United_States#Schedule_I for background on the classification of Cannabis, and I can't find the exact quote from the late 90's reclassification denial, but basically they said it should remain in schedule I because: Marijuana contains more than 400 chemicals, including most of the harmful substances found in tobacco smoke. Smoking one marijuana cigarette deposits about four times more tar into the lungs than a filtered tobacco cigarette. (notice that one delivery method without filter is selectively compared with a filtered method for the other substance)

    What is really interresting about this is that not only do they totally ignore the fact that pot can be eaten (not exclusively smoked), and that it too can be filtered (water pipes, etc), but that there are no studies that show an increase in cacer from smoking Cannabis, in fact, some of the studies done show a decrease in cancer incidence from people smoking pot, because while nicotine is a cancer-causing violent poison, THC is a cancer-reducing psychotrope with no know toxicity level (it is impossible to have a lethal overdose of THC). But they talk about the other substances, besides from nicotine, that are also present and nasty... and assume that no one ever filters them out, or simply bypass their creation by cooking it instead of burning it.

    It is illegal in spite of all available science, it was made illegal temporarily in waiting for this evidence, but once the evidence came, it was ignored. The law is a clear fraud, and a deadly one at that: Peter Alexander McWilliams (August 5, 1949 - June 14, 2000) was a writer and cannabis activist. A vocal supporter of medical cannabis due to being terminally ill with AIDS and cancer, McWilliams was investigated by the Federal Drug Enforcement Administration and convicted for violating federal marijuana laws, even though medical marijuana was legal under California state law. He later choked to death on his own vomit when he was forced to switch from cannabis to Marinol in order to remain free on bond pending sentencing .
    No honest man should stand for this travesty.
  6. Re:Microsoft found making PR-FUD-ing research by digitig · · Score: 4, Informative · on Vista Security Claims Debunked

    - If many people are analysing code, you will find more bugs. If you don't review your code (or for example, don't have peer review - which closed source often lacks.) Then no bugs at all will be discovered.

    - The existing number of unfound bugs is related to the number of discovered bugs. Well no not really: The number of found bugs is actually related to how long and how many researchers have been testing and actively looking for the bugs and second to that is how buggy the software is. I can assign a team of one researcher with no experience and they'll never find any bugs in the poorest of software.

    There's a good discussion of this from software metrics guru Norman Fenton at http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~norman/papers/metrics_r oadmap.pdf, which shows that the existing number of unfound bugs is related to the number of discovered bugs. It's related negatively. In one sense this is a "well, duh!" finding -- that the more bugs you've discovered, the fewer are undiscovered. But much software quality assurance is founded on the assumption (which realise is what you were really challenging) that number of bugs discovered is positively correlated with number of bugs undiscovered. The empirical data says otherwise.
  7. Re:Only E21x are forbiden. by Noehre · · Score: 1 · on Some Soft Drinks May Damage Your DNA

    Benzoate is not metabolized into benzene.

    http://www.chem.qmul.ac.uk/iubmb/enzyme/reaction/m isc/benzoate.html

  8. New news? by haluness · · Score: 4, Interesting · on The Energy of Empty Space != Zero

    I thought that this was previously known - isn't the Higgs field (http://hepwww.ph.qmul.ac.uk/epp/higgs1.html) supposed to endow empty space with a non-zero energy? (Or maybe it was postulated but not observed)

  9. Re:Aluminium? Caesium? by damian+cosmas · · Score: 4, Informative · on Chemical Words List

    Aluminium and Caesium are the correct IUPAC spellings of those elements for historical reasons.

    Caesium comes straight from the Latin caesius for the color sky blue, which is the most prominent line in the element's emission spectrum. Aluminium was so named because many elements at the time had -ium suffixes, and is the official spelling endorsed by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. The American Chemical Society, however, uses "Aluminum".

  10. Some links by Eric+Giguere · · Score: 1 · on Studying Computer Science at Home?

    A quick search on "computer science distance education" and you can find a plethora of links, such as this one:

    You can also check out Canada's Athabaska University.

    Eric
  11. Re:Should I be worried? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative · on Pentagon to Significantly Cut CS Research

    *What* fundamental advances? Name them!

    Firm semantical foundations, the Pi-Calculus, Game Semantics, Full Abstraction results for various languages, Zero Knowledge Proofs, Breakthroughs in Program Logics (Separation Logic, Honda-Logics), Proof-Carrying Code, Model-Checking.

  12. Re:Should I be worried? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative · on Pentagon to Significantly Cut CS Research

    *What* fundamental advances? Name them!

    Firm semantical foundations, the Pi-Calculus, Game Semantics, Full Abstraction results for various languages, Zero Knowledge Proofs, Breakthroughs in Program Logics (Separation Logic, Honda-Logics), Proof-Carrying Code, Model-Checking.

  13. Re:I blame IUPAC nomenclature by Dr.+GeneMachine · · Score: 5, Informative · on Longest Chemical Name: 64,060 letters
    This is no IUPAC problem - this long name is simply the sequence. If you have a functional protein, you have other nomenclatures at hand, for example the IEC classification for enzymes. Biochemists have developed several systems of nomenclature, which are actually useful (Overview here. IUPAC has its place for small molecules organic chemists are concerned with.

    By the way, if you want a longer and equally useless chemical name, you can always spell out the nucleotid sequence of a whole chromosome in full nomenclature.

  14. Re:I blame IUPAC nomenclature by Dr.+GeneMachine · · Score: 5, Informative · on Longest Chemical Name: 64,060 letters
    This is no IUPAC problem - this long name is simply the sequence. If you have a functional protein, you have other nomenclatures at hand, for example the IEC classification for enzymes. Biochemists have developed several systems of nomenclature, which are actually useful (Overview here. IUPAC has its place for small molecules organic chemists are concerned with.

    By the way, if you want a longer and equally useless chemical name, you can always spell out the nucleotid sequence of a whole chromosome in full nomenclature.

  15. Re:At Queen Mary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on OSDL Says SCO Suit Was Good for Linux

    Unless he meet at Queen Mary http://www.qmul.ac.uk/

  16. Re:At Queen Mary by Mindwarp · · Score: 2, Informative · on OSDL Says SCO Suit Was Good for Linux

    ...or of course when he's talking about The College Formerly Known (tm) as Queen Mary College, then Queen Mary and Westfield College, and now just Queen Mary.

    Queen Mary

    Yeah, I know. I preferred it when it was called Queen Mary College too.

  17. Re:stereo blindness is quite common by jc42 · · Score: 1 · on Stereoscopic images of Titan's surface constructed

    Just imagine if people had eyes like those of the diopsid fly ...

  18. Re:It's funny to watch people react here.. by Noren · · Score: 2, Insightful · on U.S. Dept. of Energy Takes A New Look At Cold Fusion
    or maybe propose a theory that could explain the results another way
    Okay, one explanation for why more heat energy might be given off in the deuterium case over the hydronium case is a well-known chemical phenomenon- an isotope effect. Here's an example of how a reasonable scientist might study an initially inexplicable temperature anomaly which was found when using different isotopes in the same chemical environment.

    Instead of saying 'we don't yet fully understand the isotopic effects of hydrogen in a palladium lattice' the "Cold Fusion" crowd is begging the question and assuming any energy they don't immediately understand the source of must be caused by cold fusion, and when they find "extra" energy they proclaim their preconceived supposition of fusion as fact.

    I hope DOE doesn't squander any of its limited research budget on these quacks.

  19. Re:Uh-oh... by Bernie · · Score: 1 · on NASA Installs Linux Supercomputer

    Cool; vi is a derived work from one of the professors at my institution in the UK.

    Does this mean Queen Mary owns NASA?

  20. Re:I'm sorry, but this is entirely incorrect. by jayed_99 · · Score: 3, Informative · on E ~ mc^2
    Dude. I have to say it. I *have* to say it.

    Lorentz transformations might be "normal math" to you, but to a lot of people (even the average slashdotter) they probably aren't. Think about it. If the poster that you're replying to could *do* Lorentz transformations then he wouldn't be having this mental roadblock...because by learning how to do them, he would have figured out the concepts involved.

    It might be more helpful in the future to say something like "here is a cool little Java applet that visually (and interactively) explains a Lorentz transformation. It's not a thorough mathematical explanation, but it should give you some clues to what I'm talking about. Simple Lorentz transformations can be done easily with the skills that you (hopefully) learned in high school algebra. I know that most papers explaining Lorentz transformation are written in mathematicese, but, hey, it's just like learning Perl. Take it slowly, one step at a time, and work all of the examples out yourself. Good luck."

  21. Re:molecule size vs. atomic size by MarkusQ · · Score: 2 · on Lucent Reexamines Breakthrough Research
    A molecule, by definition, is made up of different kinds of atoms (that is, different elements.) Diamond is made up of carbon only, so it is an allotrope (sp?) of carbon not a molecule made up of carbon.

    Wrong on two counts. First, a molecule doesn't have to consist of more than one type of atom, and second, the surface of a diamond consists of other atoms (typically hydrogen or oxygen, IIRC) "capping off" the carbon latice.

    -- MarkusQ

  22. Audio from Talk by thick_sliced · · Score: 3, Informative · on Alan Cox Attacks the European DMCA
    You can listen to the audio of the talk:

    http://www.odl.qmul.ac.uk/eucd/

  23. NIS for Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0 · on Cross-platform Password Management?

    Has anyone looked at NIS for Windows?

  24. Other Talk: Copyright vs Community by thick_sliced · · Score: 5, Informative · on Stallman on Software Patents
    Stallman also recently gave a talk at Queen Mary, University of London.
    An audio version of the talk can be found at:

    http://www.odl.qmul.ac.uk/stallman/

  25. Re:Lies, Damned, lies, and now this. by Anarchofascist · · Score: 2, Insightful · on IBM Patents Web Page Templates
    To sumarise. "IBM legally f*ks the system for the benefit of shareholders. If you try to stop them, we'll become a third world country." Am I right so far? Then you give us this gem, your only assertion of fact to support your flimsy argument:

    And finally, for those who think that patents are evil or somehow inappropriate for software, processes, and "obvious" inventions,[hey! he's talking about me!] consider this. There is a 100% direct correlation to a country's GDP, the strength of its intellectual property protections, and the number of patents filed by its citizens.

    All dogs have four legs. My cat has four legs, therefore my cat is a dog.

    There is a 100% direct correlation between a country's GDP, the number of people who own TVs, and the number of TV shows produced, therefore TV increases your GDP?

    There is a 100% inverse correlation between a country's GDP, and the percentage of the population who sleep in mud huts, therefore destroy all mud huts!

    A quote from an article on causal reasoning:

    People strive to achieve a coherent interpretation of the events that surround them. The organisation of events by schemas of cause-effect relations serves to achieve this goal.

    But whereas with a normative treatment of conditional probability the data D and an event X can be equally informative, psychologically, causal data tends to have a far greater impact than other data of equal informativeness. So much so, that in the presence of data that evokes a causal schema, incidental data which does not fit that schema is given little or no consideration.