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User: FrankBough

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Comments · 33

  1. Re:What will this mean... on Sophos Acquires ActiveState · · Score: 1

    You've never met the founders of Sophos. They are clinically allergic to consultants.

  2. Streaming to PDAs on Content Control in Mobile Devices · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does anyone actually want to watch videos on a mobile phone? There is a huge assumption being made by the proponents of 3G that people will actually pay to do this - whether they're paying for content or bandwidth or both they'll have to pay one way or another.

  3. The Answer on Electronic Abacus · · Score: 1

    ...printing the final answer in and on whatever form was required.

    Forty-two.

  4. Re:Which Fuel? on Boeing to Develop a Fuel Cell Powered Airplane · · Score: 1

    A rethink on the air network strategy to produce lighter, smaller, more efficient aircraft which possibly fly a bit slower and take shorter 'hops' would bring Fuel Cell flight closer.
    This would be a worthwhile trade off for a more environmentally sound and sustainable flight infrastructure.


    And for better hops, just power it with beer.

  5. Re:Lets not forget the Net is International.... on Sell Out: Blocking an Open Net · · Score: 1

    I agree strongly with this. Whilst it is a shame that they feel they have to censor the net, what we should be pleased about is that they have actually allowed it at all. I was at Gitex (the major Gulf region IT show) in 1997 and met people from Saudi and Iran whose only link with the 'net was international dial-up accounts - many with AOL (which is worse? aol or censorware?).

    In brief, I think that hoping for the Internet to create a more open world is hoping for too much. The good thing is that it is beginning to make parts of the world less closed.

  6. Re:long history of "official" trojans not detected on McAfee Will Ignore FBI Spyware · · Score: 1

    The main reason why BackOrifice was considered a trojan rather than a legitimate software tool was that it contains a 'Stealth mode' designed specifically to be used without the user being aware that they are being snooped on. Back Office does not.

  7. Is Bin Laden a radio ham? on USNA "Budget" Satellite Launched and Functioning · · Score: 0, Troll

    The first message relayed through the satellite came several hours later from an amateur radio user in Qatar in the Middle East.

    The text was 'Mail the merchandise now'.

    I bet the CIA are loving that.

  8. Re:132,000ft and then what? on Ballooning into Space · · Score: 3, Funny

    By the look of those chairs they're sitting in, I think they're actually just researching whether you can still get the soccer on satellite TV at 132,000ft. The world's highest couch potatoes.

    I wonder what would happen to their tinnies at 1% atmospheric pressure - that would be some really fizzy beer.

  9. Re:5 letter aussies on Security Auditing for Linux · · Score: 1

    No, I'm the other one.

  10. 5 letter aussies on Security Auditing for Linux · · Score: 5, Funny

    First it was SAMBA, now it's SNARE. What have these Aussies got with 5 letter 'S' names?

    Apparently the first idea for a name was System Tracking, User Protection and Intrusion Detection but they thought that would be stupid.

  11. Re:An interesting precedent on Yahoo! Not Bound by French Court Ruling · · Score: 1

    It's an interesting idea, but this judgement refers to free speech, not commerce. In France it is still illegal to promote Nazi hate stuff, and I have no doubt that it is illegal for a French person to buy the stuff if they're in France. All the judgement says is that the content of a website based in one country cannot be forcibly restricted by the laws of another.

    There are lots of very special laws in the US and other countries that govern actual real money type commerce as opposed to just speech, expression or opinions.

    As for freezing of terrorist monies, this ruling has absolutely nothing to do with that. Let's face it - no legal system is above the hypocrisy of saying 'our law protects our interests against your laws, but we will come down on a ton of bricks on you if you try to do the same.'

  12. Re:.biz = .com on .biz Open For Biz · · Score: 1

    This is so true. So many .net are registered by the same company as .com.

    What is really needed is more functional TLDs. I like the idea of the .aero one which is coming along (although whether the aviation industry will survive is another matter). Tuvalu are making a reasonable amount of cash our of selling the .tv domain (like this british TV channel).
    There seems to be no point in expanding the range
    of general TLDs because it will just be a race for the big companies to snatch them up again.

    So to go with .aero we should have .auto, .food, .sex, .drugs, .music, .law and some others, reserve them for truly international organisations and put some responsible people in charge of policing them. For everything else, use the national tlds.

  13. This was our idea on NASA Considers Privatizing Space Shuttles · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Weren't we talking about this the other day in the context of the ISS. Not exactly, maybe, but it all goes to the same end.

    If you take this out of the hands of the government then you can reduce the amount of interference it gets. By all means we should support government interference (in the public interest, of course) during development, but when a technology is well established it should run OK. Leaving it in government hands lays it open to streams of politicians who just can't resist fiddling.

    Let's face it - there already is competition in this market. That's why the Russian rockets and Arianes and so on are getting so much of the launch traffic. That's also why people are thinking of building new launch facilities commercially.

    Maybe if there is a profit motive behind it for someone, the shuttle will realise its original objective of being a low-cost launch vehicle.

    more on the original story here, BTW

  14. Re:kernel dev? on One-Machine Linux Cluster · · Score: 2, Informative

    No, it's a single kernel running compartmentalised. If you introduce a development kernel driver and it crashes, all the virtual machines go down with it.

  15. Re:From the IEEE web site on Drive-By Hacking in London · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Yes, but I think that the difficulty in getting to the wiring is actually pretty important here. 802.11 is being sold as a panacaea for cheap start-up networking as much as for huge financial institutions. Cheap start-ups are not likely to have the expertise to implement IPSEC internally even if they've heard of it.

  16. Re:From the IEEE web site on Drive-By Hacking in London · · Score: 1

    It's possible to encrypt any network traffic on top of the transport layer - using IPSec for example, so you could build something useful out of it. There is some encryption in 802.11 but it's very noddy.

  17. From the IEEE web site on Drive-By Hacking in London · · Score: 2, Informative

    IEEE 802.11b Working Group

    In geek speak, the IEEE 802.11b standard is the family of specifications created by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. for wireless, Ethernet local area networks in 2.4 gigahertz bandwidth space. The rest of us English-language users should think of IEEE 802.11b as a way to connect our computers and other gadgets to each other and to the Internet at very high speed without any cumbersome wiring--or a significant price tag. Providing as much wireless speed as it does at its modest price promises to have profound implications for a world bent of anytime/anywhere communication.


    Without any cumbersome wiring, yeah, or pesky security or annoying encryption. What about the profounf implications of that. You really have to wonder what they were thinking.

  18. There's more about this here on Massachusetts Holds Out On MS Case · · Score: 1

    The BBC have an updated reported on this issue today (2001/11/06) here.

  19. GPL on Sharp Readies SL-5000D · · Score: 1

    Is Embedix GPL'd. If not, why not? If so, will Sharp be releasing source for everything on it?

  20. Re:IBM and Profit on IBM Launches Public Domain Project "Eclipse" · · Score: 1

    OK, but still they can sell even more hardware if good Open Source apps and Operating Systems run on them. My argument still holds.

  21. Re:IBM and Profit on IBM Launches Public Domain Project "Eclipse" · · Score: 1

    If you want to know how IBM are going to make a profit off this, remember that IBM are a hardware company.

    A lot of their efforts in the software world in the past few years have been aimed primarily at propping up their top-end AS/400 and S/390 computer systems - look at the developments they did with Notes after buying Lotus. Now they have put a lot of support into getting Linux to work on these systems. You can run hundreds of virtual Linux boxes on a single S/390, if you believe the hype.

    Of course, an operating system is no good without applications, so that is what they do next - aupport the application developers.

    With AIX becoming more Linuxy and so-on, they are trying to beat Microsoft by forcing the pace of Open Source development and lending their reputation to its take-up. Great idea!

  22. Re:Well done, slashdotters on NASA Task Force Recommends Radical Changes · · Score: 1

    save $X billion on fuel

    save $X billon because the cost

    Is that X as in OS X or X as in n*y where n is the number you first thought of and y is the square root of a gallon of kerosene?

  23. Well done, slashdotters on NASA Task Force Recommends Radical Changes · · Score: 1

    Of course the budget's overrun. No-one ever got a budget approved by being honest about it. The only really unbelieveable thing about budget overruns is that people get surprised by them.

    However, we have proven here that all is not lost. If we combine all the suggestions here presented we have a viable solution:

    Save Money
    Use the ISS to drop a few bombs every time it passes over Afghanistan (or Kosovo, or wherever happens to be a problem). Save $200million in B52 fuel.

    Make Money
    There must be several more multi-millionaires who would pay for the privilege of a trip into space. Let's say 100 millionaires paying $100m each - that's $10billion. Not to mention the ones who would pay to drop bombs.

    Combine the two, and a couple of advertisement hoardings on the back of the solar panels and you're in credit by quite a bit. Put half of that into non-sexy research on earth, and the rest can keep the station running.

  24. Net consumers won't pay on W3C's RAND Point Man Responds · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Nothing happens without money - you have to admit that the web wouldn't be anywhere near as big and exciting as it is now if it wasn't for the commercial interests. However, noone would ever have got anything out of it if it wasn't for unrestricted standards that anyone is free to implement in their own way.

    The net, like a lot of the latest comms technology is still driven by a 'toy' mentality amongst most consumers. They really want the net and all the cool things on it, but not if they have to pay real money for it. So where 'standards' have emerged that are not in themselves free, it is because free access is available to implementations of them - like Acrobat or Shockwave or whatever.

    The reality is that on the web you can still only expect to make money from the people who create content. If you impose cost-based restrictions on the things that view content then you might as well not bother because no-one will use it.

    My point is that it is stupid to impose costs on the people implementing the standards (ie the developers). If you must get money from a technology, then get it from the people who use it to make money themselves.

  25. Cultural assimilation - art imitates life on Civilization III Is Out, And It Rocks · · Score: 5, Funny

    My favorite new aspect is the cultural assimilation of other cities. For example, if you have a strong cultural identity (basically, borders)

    Borders, Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC - presumably there are a number of options that help impose your cultural identity.