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User: desdemona

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Comments · 36

  1. Re:Gee, ya think? on The Biology of Network Security · · Score: 1

    You foolish young man, it's VMs all the way down!

  2. Re:Greg Egan wrote a story somewhat along these li on Software Predicts Music Success · · Score: 1

    Or more pertinently, his story 'Beyond the Whistle Test'. But I can't find that on the web at all )-:

  3. Re:To put 10 Petaflops in perspective on Japan Wants to Build 10 Petaflop Supercomputer · · Score: 1

    Seriously though, AI research will go mainstream with the first supercomputer that can process at greater than 1 brainsec.

    No! AI research will go mainstream the moment the first desktop workstation machine passes 1 brainsec. Cos who's going to waste $10 million on using a cutting-edge supercomputer to do completely blue-sky crazy research, when there's nukes and hurricanes and proteins to simulate?

  4. Re: Grammatical correction on Keyboards are Good; Mouses are Dumb · · Score: 1

    I've met the Queen: the plural - in The Queen's English no less - of a computer mouse is 'mouses'. Fact.

  5. Re:Freemarker on What are Some Essential Java Libraries? · · Score: 1
    Don't use Velocity. It is a nice, simple template language, but you suddenly bang your head against its limitations. Mainly, it's only got macros, not composable procedures, which makes life a pain in the arse.


    I haven't used FreeMarker, but it claims to fix that kind of stuff. Next time...

  6. Re:Why Open Source Codes are essential on BBC Wants Help With Dirac Codec · · Score: 1
    Or even Love DRM and get it from Steve Ballmer...


    oh the humanity

  7. Re:Motivation? on BT Blocks 10,000 Child-Porn Site Visits A Day · · Score: 1

    Yes, but him taking a picture of them having sex would be child pornography. As are, technically, all those pictures of Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon this year bending over etc. I do hope the Sun has got rid of all their archives of 17-year-old Sam Fox from years ago....

  8. Re:Man vs machine on Brain's Cache Memory Found · · Score: 2, Funny

    and the anachronisms still linger. I'm going to "let off steam" before I "blow my top".

  9. Re:Hmm... on 500 EURO reward for finding car by finding laptop · · Score: 1

    Just looked up my IMEI number. Mine's from Finland too; I definitely didn't buy it there.

  10. Re:Neat device, but the price had better be good.. on Sony To Launch E Ink-based eBook In April · · Score: 1
    ...2 big plastic tubs...


    Mistake. Big mistake. You will learn from this - pack books in small boxes.

  11. Re:Maybe... on The Unhappy World of IT Professionals · · Score: 1
    It's not really that shallow to feel that way. One feature of a happy community is a balanced community: the overwhelming male presence in IT encourages the kind of macho bull that makes life so stressful. It's like living your life in a football locker room.

    Adding women to the office would make things a lot more balanced and sane; everybody would be happier.

  12. Re:Usability? on Configuring the 2.6 Linux Kernel · · Score: 1

    So you're saying you hate RAS syndrome? (Redundant Acronym Syndrme)

  13. Re:Someone please make a debian package! on Java SDK 1.5 'Tiger' Beta Finally Released · · Score: 2, Informative

    Look for mpkg-j2sdk (http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~ude2/debian/) - it takes the .bin from sun and packages it up into a deb. Much easier...

  14. Re:Should faking be illegal? on AOL Tests Sender Permitted From / E-mail Caller ID · · Score: 1

    Check out enigmail. It's still a slight pain to set up (well, at least for signing attachments in the multitude of diffferent MIME formats) but for basic work it's dead easy)

  15. Re:Sorry.. on A Terabyte In A Cigar Box · · Score: 1

    You've got your probabilities the wrong way round. Taking your example of a 5% chance per month, then, per month:

    1 drive has a .95 chance of making it
    2 drives have a .95^2 chance of both making it. .. ..
    8 drives have .95^8 = .66 chance. Ie the chance of at least one drive failing = 1 - 0.66 = 34%

  16. Re:Mandatory access control for all! on Microsoft To Demo 'Palladium' At WinHEC · · Score: 1

    I think you're talking about Capabilities - the OS Eros is a 'proof-of-concept'. Processes are handed capability objects - like a connection to the ICMP socket - and physically can't do anything else. These capability objects could be as simple as a file descriptor; they could also do what you want and have logic in them to limit data size etc. Quite an interesting idea.

  17. Re:that's pretty shortsighted on Slashback: Privacy, Spectrum, Location · · Score: 1

    THere are 10 types of people: those that get binary, and those that don't.

  18. Re:I dunno, but maybe... on Ring Tones Will Save the Music Industry · · Score: 1
    Yes, it can do SMS if you can find one of the other 3 people in the US who can use it

    Aaaaagh! That's the problem. In the UK, everybody uses SMS. The other day, my mother got a text from her friend saying that she should check her email. It's moments like that that make me realise I'm living in the 21st century after all. I mean, my mother checking her email? What next, flying cars?

  19. Re:Well, there's a shock. on Raising Barriers to Entry into the Music Business · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Having helped developed the world's premiere publishing and mechanical royalties accounting system (tm), I can tell you that even now - without the 'hundreds of thousands' of extra publishers - it's a nightmare. Royalty statements for even small publishers or labels run into thousands and tens of thousands of lines sometimes. The whole system of royalty collection is very very complicated, messy and time-consuming. There's no way that the systems - both computer and the societal, legal systems - could cope with such an expansion. It's just not feasible.

  20. Re:Okay. on World Cup Final · · Score: 1

    err.. maybe because the rules state the goalkeeper has to stay stationary on his line until the player strikes the ball?

  21. Re:UKGov currently embroiled in 'dig-for-dirt' ema on UK Government Expands Spying Powers · · Score: 1

    As another post points out, the minister was only asking what their political affiliations were. If a group, whatever their motivations, wish to pressure the government into changing major policy and maybe spending billions more (on automating safety equipment on trains) then they are conciously entering a politcal debate. They cannot then expect to be immune to standard political tactics - which aren't even particularly nasty - such as enquiries to find out if they are affiliated to the opposition.

    The whole rail debate in Britain is horribly skewed. Byers was a sacrificial lamb - the whole mess the government and the country is in is due to a misappreciation of the facts of rail travel. It is still far safer to travel by rail, and by forcing incredibly costly safety equipment onto the railways - which would save about 3 lives a year IIRC - more people would switch to cars, costing many more lives. It's all politics.

  22. Greg Egan... on A New Kind of Science · · Score: 1

    is gonna love this.

  23. Re:Data Protection Act in UK on Vermont Goes Opt-In, Corps Unhappy · · Score: 1

    Hah! I used to work in a direct-mail list company, and I tell you, these lists are at least a year out of date. At least. It's a joke.

  24. Re:True Names on Science Fiction into Science Fact? · · Score: 1

    I'd also have to add Vinge's descriptions of 'localizers' in A Deepness In The Sky. Thousands and thousands of tiny processors, powered by microwave pulses and keeping track of their own location, provide very powerful distributed processing wherever the wind blows. People talk about pervasive computing - this is the kind of tech that'll happen...

  25. Re:You have a very American point of view on Morals and Layoffs · · Score: 1

    So, if I understand you correctly, you think the national economy is more important than YOUR job?

    No, he thinks that other people's jobs, including his own future jobs, are more important. That's what the economy is - other people just like you.