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User: Shimbo

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  1. Try to see the exhibition on Full Moon · · Score: 1
    I saw it, when it was on at the Hayward. It was worth taking time out and looking at those photos properly, as you would at paintings.

    Blown up big I got the impression of a vast, trackless desert. You tend to look at video footage of the moon and think of it as a little ball in the depths of space. When you look at the photos, you realise that we have explored but a few tiny patches of an immense and ancient world.

  2. If Tesla were alive today... on Tesla: Erased at the Smithsonian · · Score: 4
    I can see him being denounced loudly on /.

    'Why has he got a patent on alternating current - it's not like he invented electrons, he's just moving them back and forwards. Anyone could have thought of that.'

  3. Re:Honestly! on Judge Reinstates Java Injunction Against Microsoft · · Score: 1
    I still don't understand how Microsoft's additions constitute 'pollution' of Java. Didn't they stop calling it Java in favor of J++ anyway?

    They added features to Visual J++ in a way that wasn't obvious that would cause compatibility problems; then put pressure to resellers to ship their VM. If they were being responsible they would have an option - warn about non-standard constructs.

    And ignoring MSFT's lip service about 'innovation', don't they have a right to improve their product in any manner in which they see fit?

    Of course, except it's not their product. It's primarily Sun's product, licenced to Microsoft under contract. If MS didn't like the terms, they shouldn't have agreed to them.

    As for standards bodies: they could bog things down for years. I'm still eagerly awaiting a standard for socket programming in "C".

  4. Reading the wrong books on Citizen Case, DVD-CCA, Napster, and MP3 · · Score: 1
    How could they have imagined that we are, instead, being stalked by invasive and predatory corporations, who don't want to torture or kill us, because each of us is somebody's target demographic.

    It's always unwise to claim that SF authors have never thought of something. If you go back and read Ray Bradbury you'll find people chatting inanely in public on mobile phones; annoyingly intelligent devices; and a whole town taken over by advertisers.

    I always used to say we would go to hell with Bradbury. Sadly, it seems to get closer every day.

  5. Re:Cruel and unusual Punishment? on Kevin Mitnick Free Today · · Score: 1
    Of course, it would not have been considered cruel and unusual punishment to deny Internet access in 1689. That's part of the fun of enshrining general principles in legislation - you never know how future generations will interpret them.

    The Bill of Rights is substantially in force still, so I'll give up mentioning it, if other /.ers give up that mentioning that other historical document, the US constitution.

  6. Re:Cruel and unusual Punishment? on Kevin Mitnick Free Today · · Score: 1
    Actually, it's in the Eight Amendment to the US Constitution.

    However, it dates back to the (English) Bill of Rights of 1689:

    'That excessive bail ought not to be required,nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.'

  7. Re:As of JUNE. Give me a break. on Some Water & Sewer Plants May Not Be Y2K Compliant · · Score: 1
    The trouble with the Y2K problem is that you can't be entirely sure without checking. It sounds almost inconceivable that anyone could make a blunder this way.

    However, I refer you to the respected 'Risks' archive: volume 20 issue 46. 'Y2K test sends sewage flowing in Los Angeles'.

    We all know there is a lot of hype out there, and probably only one in a hundred Y2K stories are true. However, that's an awful lot of genuine problems amongst the chaff.

  8. Getting what you asked for on Corporate vs Open Source:Sun Stealing Blackdown? · · Score: 1
    'Hopefully more credit [to Blackdown] will appear on printed and online magazine in the next days. '

    --Paolo Ciccone , JBuilder dev.team, /.

    I think one has to accept a certain amount of crap from a press release. The PR guys might not have known better. Still, a public acknowledgement of the Blackdown work seems in order.

  9. Re:It's a daft idea on UK Govt Plans To Set Up 'Armageddon' Centre · · Score: 1
    There is almost no chance of doing anything about it at the last minute. However, for asteroid impacts, unlike say, comets on a near parabolic orbit we may have years of advance warning if we could plot the orbits accurately enough.

    Sure these things are hugely massive, and travelling at enormous speeds. However, they are also aiming at a (comparatively) tiny target from way off. A small delta-v might well be enough to deflect them off course. It must be true, I saw it on Star Trek!

    In any case, the only issue we need to be thinking about is when not if it will be practical to build such systems. Giving a few k$ to do a feasability study, against a saving potentially in the G$ (or higher) range makes complete sense.

  10. Re:UK politicians on George W. Bush Vs. Parody Site · · Score: 1

    Surely not, after all our Tony has had Bill G. come over and explain it to him ;)

  11. Re:Heh on Waiting for the Knock · · Score: 1
    Indeed. Some lawyers have expressed the opinion that various provisions of the law break both the right to privacy, and the right to a fair trial enshrined in the European charter of human rights.

    The European Court might well rule this legislation in breach of the charter.

  12. Re:Job security? try fortran on How To Write Unmaintainable Code · · Score: 1
    It's disappointing that the all work done on Fortran 90 and 95 has gone largely to waste because of the absence of open source compilers.

    If C++ folks can get away with statements like "if you don't know C++ version 3, you don't know C++", you should IMHO not write Fortran off until you know at least Fortran 90 (mixed case). Hell, it's not even the current version anymore.

    Everyone and his mother has an opinion about Fortran - but usually based on out of date ideas.

    Fortran still works well for what it is designed for - number crunching in scientific/engineering environments.

  13. Re:"Portable" Java on Vote for a FreeBSD port of JDK1.2 from Sun · · Score: 1
    I think a lot of people are missing the point about Java. It's a language with a well defined specification. Why should Sun have to port it to n platforms? I don't hear people asking for Sun to port their C++ compiler to Linux, or their NFS source code.

    At work, I used it used it to develop code on NT, and dropped the class files straight on Tru64 with no problems. Neither JDK was made by Sun but they passed the Sun compatibility tests.

    Can people really not tell the difference between this and M$'s proprietary lock in APIs?

  14. Re:Translations copyrighted on World's Oldest Book is GPLed · · Score: 1

    While we're on (or off) this topic - Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Laureate has spent the last 15 years on a new translation of Beowulf. It is just recently in print and has had very good reviews.

  15. Re:what I'm wondering... on Bubbleboy Virus Gets Wild · · Score: 1
    You can't uninstall IE on Windows '98. Its security holes are seamlessly integrated with the operating system.

    Did you miss the Microsoft trial, or what?

  16. Last finding on The Post-Microsoft Era · · Score: 1
    The last finding was the most damning:

    "The ultimate result is that some innovations that would truly benefit consumers never occur for the sole reason that they do not coincide with Microsoft's self-interest."

    It reminds us what this case is about: M$ vs. the freedom to innovate. There seems to be a typo on M$'s page, where they accidently put DOJ instead.

  17. Re:Err... it's not *quite* as stupid as you think, on Popular (& Common Sense) Y2k Fix Patented · · Score: 1
    The nearest I've seen to this style of dates is the ASCII extension method. You just wrap the high digit round to ':', like the Windows 3.1 file manager does :)

    This is in RSX-11 on the PDP-11. Computing for the :0 century!

  18. Re:Occams razor (still stuck in the PC era?) on Statement on IPv6 Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1
    A lot of /.ers don't seem to be thinking very far ahead on this thread. Try to think 10 or 20 years ahead, and realise that whatever the future looks like, IPng is likely to be a key part of it.

    The typical case today where the most common item assigned an IP address is some flavour of PC just won't be true anymore. One can safely predict that the majority of IP aware devices won't even have keyboards.

    We need autoconfiguration folks! We've come some way down the line with DHCP, and with dynamic DNS updates a bit further. However, it's all a bit overkill for the simpler situations.

    Maybe the IETF screwed up slightly by doing the obvious thing (which various vendors have done previously). But it's easily fixed.

    The whole issue of reprogramming your NICs MAC address is an irrelevance. If you're going to go to the trouble of doing that, just use a manual IP address. But remember - there are billions of them for each of us.

    The next person who suggests manual configuration is the answer to it all gets a jar of nanobots, a magnifying glass, and a small screwdriver to set their IP addresses (via DIP switches) dumped on him.

  19. Re:You can get the MAC of most PC's on the Interne on Statement on IPv6 Privacy Concerns · · Score: 1
    I would say far from most. It's an elementary security precaution not to bind NETBIOS (used for file/print) to a dialup adapter.

    The author is describing a cable modem/ADSL setup via the Ethernet port, with multiple local hosts. That doesn't sound like a typical configuration to me. Really, if you're going to leave your machine online via a semi-permanent mechanism like that you ought to make some effort to harden it.

    Even with Linux, OpenBSD or whatever, one of the first moves in connecting a local network to the Internet is to do it via a machine with two NICs, disabling unecessary services on the external one.

    If you just bang in a permanent connection to the Internet, having others track your MAC address is going to be way down your list of things to worry about.

  20. Genetic intellectual property on Monsanto Agrees Not to Sell "Terminator" Seeds · · Score: 1
    It is far from clear that genes should be patentable at all. After all they haven't been developed by the biotechnology companies. It's just a cut and paste job from the creator's original source. What a shame she forgot to GPL it.

    Several human genes have been patented also, so in the future it may be wise to consult a lawyer before any unauthorized reproductive activity.