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User: spiro_killglance

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  1. Re:Check your dates on Patent On 'Private' URLs · · Score: 1
    I did one back in November 1996 for access to a web database on Diamond Tribology (diamond coating). The URL contained the username and password encrypted with todays date plus a checksum field and encrytped again.

    But that isn't even the beginning of the prior art, since I got the idea from a webpage article about on providing password access. Back then it was Netscape 1.something and the NCSA server, and not all browsers could do HTTP authorisation.

  2. Re:Resistance != 0 on Superconducting Cables To Carry Power In Detroit · · Score: 1
    No a Super conductor has zero resistance, the complete circuit however does not have zero resistance, the resistance at the load end of the circuit, and at the battery/generator end limit the current.

    If the current in a superconducting wire reaches a high enough level its magnetic field will destroy the superconductive properties of the wire, so there is an maximum current possible in the wire.

    For A/C currents while the Superconducting wire has zero resistance, it does have some impedance which also limits the maximum current but in a way that doesn't dissapate energy as heat.

  3. Re:Well, Rambus DID invent SDRAM on RAMBUS Taking SDRAM Patent To Court · · Score: 1

    Except by the rules of JEDEC if you offer technology to JEDEC then you must disclose any patent claim you have to that technology. So even if RAMBUS did invent SDRAM they still have no claim to royality on it. Secondly since the RAMBUS patents involved where orignally filed in 1991 without anything that pertained to SDRAM, and then retrospective modified in 1996 using a loophole in US patent law: Its pretty clear that RAMBUS did not invent SDRAM, and where instead knowingly and fraudlently tring to steal open technology. Since the ammounts of money each are in the billions, this is grand theft, and i demand the maximum penalty of life imprisionment for all Rambus execs involved and the death sentance for the company itself.

  4. Re:Ratings have NEVER been enforced on Crackdown on M-Rated Videogames? · · Score: 1

    Whats the problem with blood? The same game with stickly darts, Neuf arena-blast gets an ok for kids rating. Kids are a lot more able to cope with things than most people think. After all we'll Evolved in a time when kids would have to deal with having parents killed by Sabertooth tigers in front of there eyes.

  5. Not Ethics, Sound Business sense on Ethics In Computer Consulting · · Score: 1
    Never mind Ethics, its just bad business sense to rip people off. If you do a good job for someone the'll come back for more and recognmend you to there peers, if you do a bad job, they won't. Thats the business version of Karma. Sure you can get alway with doing a poor job for your first few clients, but over a period of a few years, it'll get around and be difference between you IPOing for millions and having to start a new business from scratch again.

  6. Re:mbx format on What Mailbox Format Do You Use And Why? · · Score: 1

    Because it makes harder for root to read everyone elses email?. Actually as a sys-admin myself i'd love to have mail stored in a way where only the recipent can read it. I don't want the responsiblity and i don't want the chance of management asking me to pass them the bodies of other peoples email. Todays e-mail is way too insecure and laking in privacy. I think e-mail should be automatically encrypted end-end as standard. All mail-clients should include public key encryption, and all Mail transports and temporary stores should use further encryption.

  7. Re:How long do YOU want to live? on Researchers Claim To Produce Stem Cells From Adult Cells · · Score: 1

    Depression is not really about how good your life is, its sometimes about failing to meet the goals what you set for you self, and sometimes is just plain chemical. People in poverty conditions can still be happy. And people you'd think would be on top of the world, sometimes kill themselves. Kurt Cobain, Micheal Huchance, where what millions of kids expired to and yet they couldn't live with themselves. Mother Thressa leaved in poverty all her life, and yet was happy. If your miserable and don't want to live much longer go see a psychoanalyst. Me I'm tend towards manic depression, and so know how little to do with reality depression or happiness can be. But just look at the size of the world, how much there is to learn, how many people there are to talk to, how many things you could choose to do. People can live for ever exactly the same way as they live for 70 years, one day at a time. Provided you are health in mind and body. Their is exactly the same reason to wake up in the morning in 100 years as this is to wake up tommorrow.

  8. Re:For those who will inevitably ask about prior a on Altavista's Planned Patent Lawsuits · · Score: 1

    The link was missing WAIS and freeWAIS which were around before 1990. WAIS had advanced boolean searching features, making a mocky of the claim that altavista was the first with it. WAIS did not itself have a spider, but that had been added seperately in many implementations.

  9. Did you see the Constantine news items at the link on 'Matrix' Sequels In Trouble? · · Score: 1

    A movie to based on DC Vertigo Comics Hellblazer. Yes. They only thing cooler would be a movie based on the watchmen.

  10. Re:Pathetic research by the author. on A Genome Mark-up Language · · Score: 1

    Yes, but only in binary transmitted files, text files would be uneditable because of all the control characters. But 3 nucleotides would be easy packed into base64 encoding, each one would matches an amino acid.

  11. The cure on Doomsday Virus Discovered? · · Score: 1

    OK this responce is so late that, that is the probably the last post. But if IL-4 suppresses the cell mediated, one of the other interlukeins could be used to reactive that reponse. Maybe IL-2 which is boosts T cell production. Alternatively any drug which blocks the IL-4 receptor would help.

  12. Re:Encoding? on Is There Anybody Out There? · · Score: 1
    You make the picture a prime number high by a prime number wide. Then is only one way to factorise the length so that there is only one way turning it into a picture. Of course they have to guess thats its a picture.

  13. Re:Television IS making people dumb on Information Poisoning · · Score: 1
    The government ought to.... Vigorously prosecute advertisers who make blatantly untrue claims, whether on TV, print or the Internet.

    The goverment hasn't got time for that. What they should do is made anyone lied to by I advertisement able to sue for compenation for the mere damage of being lied to. Advertisers everywhere would have to be perfectly truthful or be sue out of existances.

  14. Re:hardware can only take you so much on Million Dollar Reviews: Sun E10K/4500/450 Servers · · Score: 3
    What is Dog slow. The OS, the GUI, Serving web pages? I think you'll find solaris a very well tuned and optimised OS, the've had decades working with unix to get it right.

    We run two E450s filling loaded with 4CPUs (300MHz UltraSparc III in one and 480MHz U3 in the other), 4Gig Ram, 100Gig Plus in in multiple drives arranges as RAID 0+1. And they run very fast indeed

    Of course for a single threaded application that runs inside L1 cache, a PIII or Athlon box will beat the SUN. But for with multithread or bandwidth constrained tasks the E450s are worths every penny.

    I also really like the design of the casing plastic and ironmorgery of the E450s. Built in cabinet for 20 scsi hot swappable Hard drives. 3 Hot swappable power supply boxes. Everything pops apart easier for hardware mainantance. Lovely box.

    The downside for the price you can get ten Athlon 1200 1Gig DDR boxes and still have money left over to rack mount then and buy the rack and cabinet.

  15. Re:Better question is, why shouldn't we? on Number 9, Here We Come? · · Score: 1
    "We keep sending missions out looking for water and find nothing... "

    We find plenty of stuff, and gain knowledge of Mars history, geology (areology?). And learn about planetary geology and formation in general.

    Maybe it only interesting to you if their are intelligent aliens there. But theres are whole lot more to science than that.

  16. Re:Introverted Aliens on SETI@Home Breaks 500,000 years · · Score: 1
    Maybe? Likely intelligent life is just very rare, especially for intelligent life in the same stage of developement.

    Also is quite possible that radio is a very primative form of commication. We already know that lasers have a lot more bandwidth, and lasers used as a quantum channels would square that ammount of bandwidth.

    Finally with 80% of the universe made up of thus far undetected dark matter (~40%) and dark energy (~40%), it's very possible that the hidden sector physics may contain mediums a lot more suited to communications: shadow photons? axions? massless scalar fields?

  17. Re:Get him an older computer on Tutoring A Child Prodigy? · · Score: 1
    I agree, you'll never be poor if you can do something thats useful or whated by the world around you.

  18. Re:messed up on Tutoring A Child Prodigy? · · Score: 1
    Whoa there, you can't just start teaching a kid abouat quantum mechanics or field theory. Theres a solid ammount of maths background to learn before you can tackle those.

    You need at least advanced calculas and a knowledge of differential equations, complex numbers, fourier transforms and classical mechanics before you tackle basic quantum mechanics.

    For field theory you also need,

    group theory, matrices, tensors, hamitonian and langragian classical mechanics, statistical mechanics and special relavity.

    I took a full time degree in theorectical physics at university, we didn't start on quantum mechanics in any real mathematic detail (e.g. the wavefunction of the hydrogen) till the second year. At the end of the three year course we'd had a fairly good knowledge of quantum mechanics but field theory isn't taught in at degree levels. Cambridge university does an extra year taught MS course for top physics graduates in field theory, widely regraded as the hardest course in the world.

    Thats a pretty long course even for a child prodigy, and should only be attempted if the child really has a strong desire to study physics.

    Just start with the maths and basic physics and mechanics, and see if thats what the child whats to learn about. Aim to about A-level standards.

  19. Re:You are absolutely right! on Tutoring A Child Prodigy? · · Score: 1

    I agree with not forcing the kid beyond his desire to learn. But give him as intellectal simulation, and the choice to learn what ever he wants.
    And what is this BS aboat teaching a kid advanced stuff destroying his social skill. That is utter sterotyped crap. Their are millions of uneducation and stupid people without social skills as well. Bad social skill can come from many causes, but too much knowledge isn't one of them.

  20. Re:355? on LED Guru On InGaN-Based LEDs And The Future · · Score: 1
    Luxury! In my day we used to work 10220 days a week, and when we got home each night, 4 years after breakfest, our dads kill us and jump up and down on our graves.

    But you try telling the kids of today that and just won't believe you.

  21. Z80 on Java On 8-bit Platforms · · Score: 1
    Z80 just an 8080, noooo
    The Z80 was backwards compatable with the 8080 but added lots of new toys like indexed addressing inprovements interrupt handling, automatic refreshing of DRAM, a 16-bit I/O address space (8080 had the 256 line I/O space seperate from the normal 16-bit memory), memory block copy post increment and repeat in a single instuction. A spare set of registers for fast context switching. Bit set, reset and test.

    I wonder this new VM would fit on a ZX spectrum, the £100 Z80 computer from the 1980s?

  22. Re:In defense of nuclear power on Chernobyl (Finally) Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    > For starters, just look at the length of time the contaminants remain. Plutonium as a half life of tens of thousands of years. But arsenic and cadnium (found in from coal ash) are forever.

  23. Re:In defense of nuclear power on Chernobyl (Finally) Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    Yeah, but who needs to mine it anymore. The is a good ten-twenty years worth of material in decommisioned nuclear weapons, to keep reactors fired.

  24. Re:Half Life of U-238. Don't eat it. on Chernobyl (Finally) Shuts Down · · Score: 1

    The radon from the decay series can be bitch though, keeping you rooms well aired, if you live granite area, could save the a few cigerettes a day of lung cancer risk.

  25. Re:Fun with Cesium on Chernobyl (Finally) Shuts Down · · Score: 1
    Small correction. Cesium is not a daughter product of natural uranium decay (although the heavier radioactive alkali metal francium is a daughter product in the U-235 decay series).

    Cesium is however a very common product of fission. For some reason (probably to do with nuclear shell magic numbers) fission tend to happen assymetrically with the heavier product often iodine, xenon, barium or cesium. While the ligher products are often strontium, krypton, yttrium and rubidium.