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User: Numen

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  1. Eliminate redundancy?... on Obama Moves To Link Pentagon With NASA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm pretty ignorant on this subject, and not a US national, but wouldn't this be a rather good way to eliminate redundancy in similar projects across both agencies at a time when the US needs to rationalise expenditure?

  2. It's not appropriate content IMHO... on UK ISPs Are Censoring Wikipedia · · Score: -1, Troll

    I don't think one should censor the internet, it's the easy way out and costs a society rather than individual perpetrators. Censorship is wrong. I personally would of liked to see the CPS bring charges against Wikipedia.

    Lets be real clear here... this is an image that is of a minor in a sexually provocative pose being used for profit (marketing). It is child pornography. That's not in a grey area, it's point blank illegal to distribute or publish such material in the UK. In such cases however censorship often adds to hype and can be counterproductive, I want to stop hearing political groups using child porn as a campaign gimmick and do something substantive.

    However, there's much hypocrisy in this area, I personally think a lot of acceptable content of pop videos featuring schoolgirls are at best cynical... And hey, I'm all for porn on TV, cinemas advertising, I couldn't care as long as it's consenting adults sex and sexuality is good.

    If I was directing the CPS in the UK I'd prosecute the publishers (Wikipedia). I realise this might be a controvertial opinion, I'd just like to clear the deck of the hypocrisy on both sides of the argument.

  3. Looks like any other international security on Who Protects the Internet? · · Score: 1

    But the fact remains that no one really owns security online, which leads to gated communities with firewalls -- a highly unreliable and wasteful way to try to assure security.

    And I'm not seeing how this international security issue is much different from any other which pretty much as long as theres been human history has involved patchwork alliances and federations to stipulate, review, and enforce.

    There's nothing to lament here folks, move along please.

  4. Re:Maybe on The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast · · Score: 1

    You're right, once you get "Es no posible" you're pretty much screwed regardless of what the issue is or what you have to say. I remember somebody elses number/line getting switched to mine, and being able to demonstate this to Telefonica and just being told it wasn't possible... I had to move apartment in order to get a working line.

    My friend did manage to get Telefonica to run a line halfway up the mountain just to his house after his (Spanish) wife spent some time threatening Telefonica with what I think must have been a blood feud... nobody is quite sure what she threatented them with, but it worked.

  5. Re:Maybe on The State of UK Broadband — Not So Fast · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I live on a small Spanish island off the West coast of Africa. I have a 10Mb/s line, and I can hit the full throughput of this on a good torrent... I did so downloading Ubuntu... This was after contacting Telefonica shortly after the line was installed to express concern about the poor throughput and them saying yes the line wasn't set up properly but should work fine within 48 hours which it did.

    At a previous apartment I lost my line after somebody basically cut through it while doing DIY somewhere in the block. It was rewired I think 3 days later.

    Yes there are many bad storied about Telefonica that could be told, but my point is that I'm quite confident that I have better bandwidth here than I would have if I returned to the UK. One more reason not to go back to the UK I guess.

  6. Why IE7 and not IE8? on Google Chrome Tops Browser Speed Tests · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Chrome is the current browser beta from Google, and IE8 is the current browser beta from MS... so why compare Chrome in the same group as IE7?

  7. What no golden handshake... on Disgruntled Engineer Hijacks San Francisco's Computer System · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That director over there, he gets a golden handshake as he goes out the door... You want to keep him sweet because he knows where all your dirty secrets are and could cause all sorts of trouble for your operation.

    The sysadmin, youre going to kick out the door becuase hes blue colar... Oh, wait a minute... He really does know where all your dirty secrets are and really can bring your operation to its knees. In fact hes far more dangerous going out the door than the exec... pity you didnt think of that.

    Execs are heaved out the door all the time for being incompetent, but its done with kid gloves because theyre deemed to be potentially damaging... And they wear a suit.

    Word of advice: if youre sacking somebody who can bring your operation to a grinding halt, make sure you you keep them sweet, regardless of the job they do for your organisation. Its simple business.

  8. Even as an MS fan, good... on EU Fines Microsoft $1.3 Billion · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm a .NET dev, and rather fond of the platform... don't groan too loudly... but even I think this is a good move. I'm glad to see the EU actually prepared to hold large corporations accountable to the law. A pet hate of mine is a legal system that will sanction heavily a private citizen for minor crimes but effectively tut disaprovingly when a large company dumps waste in a river.

    Now, I'd like to see the EU start to use the same stick on large companies that also feel that they are above the law.

  9. I thought it refered to the weight... on Canadian Mint Claims Rights To Words "One Cent" · · Score: 1

    I had always thought that 1d refered to its weight, 1 dram. Hence the term "penny dram" I could be wrong though, it's just what I had rattling around my head. I note that Wikipedia agrees with your good self on this matter however.

  10. I prefered nginx + mongrel cluster on Mongrel Shortcuts · · Score: 1

    Nginx gets my vote for a http server facing onto Mongrel. http://nginx.net/

    I'm a .NET dev so having to set up web servers on a Linux box aint my favourite passtime... leave the politics outside, it's my paycheck not yours... but I had a need to test a RoR app I'm working on for both Windows and Linux, which quickly became a decision to make it Linux only... anyhow, pretty much all the options I was chewing my way through were driving me nuts, with nginx being last on the list before saying "screw it".

    Took me 20 min to find, download, build, and configure nginx facing onto a mongrel cluster as a complete Linux muppet. The benchmarks for nginx are also pretty impressive and there's not a long list of scare stories associated with memory leaks.

    Over the holidays I'll be seeing if there's any virtue in nginx facing onto a mono/xsp cluster. I don't like the Apache support for xsp 2.

    As a side note, Ruby on Rails desperately needs to clean up it's act on deploying apps for anything other than the trivial. It very quickly turns into a minefield.

    I'll also sign off by saying I'm a potentially naive source for a recommendation on how to best set up a RoR app on Linux. Do read around yourself if you take a gander at nginx. I'm potentially missing the virtues of several alternatives (most of which I have tried and rejected as flaky).

  11. Re:Wooden houses?... stone houses on Arson Science Rewritten · · Score: 1

    I live in Tenerife, a Spanish territory off the West coast of Africa... Houses here are all block and concrete, with tiled floors. The floors are poured concrete too.

    Back in the UK most houses are built out of brick with wooden floors, but more modern buildings tend to have an absence of wood. In the UK however floors tend to be carpeted. There's not a problem with brick walls as they're all made of two walls with insulating in the middle, so they're actually quite warm in the winter.

    For me, a chap from England living in Spain I'm not sure I've ever been in an all wooden structure bigger than a garden shed in my entire life.

  12. Re:Bullshit - right back at you on Microsoft Hands Over Docs To EU · · Score: 1

    You're free not to sell your software here. While you choose to sell your software here you'll do so by our rules or not at all. It really is as simple as that. You're neither compelled nor forced to sell your software here.

    The US most definitely does regulate the means by which foreign trade happens. You'll just have to get used to the EU doing likewise. The European Commission is merely doing what the DoJ didn't have the balls to do.

  13. Re:Give Me A Break on French PM Unreceptive To RMS · · Score: 1

    Here's a test... take a petition to your head of state and come back and let us know how you got on.

    The Premieres office is not he place to deliver such a petition. The appropriate ministry is... in fact finding a house representitive should probably be your first step.

    Write up how it goes for you, and let us know.

  14. Re:Mixed content model... on OpenDocument Voted In By ISO · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry but while you might be able to cite people that you *know* that do this all the time, and be happy to give your conclusions based upon what *they* do.... *I* do this all the time and I'm basing my conclusions upon what *I* do.

    Manifests are more complex for very good reason. They represent a point of refactored, decoupled extensibility... mainifest can be swapped in causing all references to point to different resources... if your data is being staged then this is a big deal.

    Mixed content models are not easier to resolve. The intermediate text nodes are still just that... nodes. Now however they're simply unmarked text nodes and you must reference their context.

  15. But they are American on ICANN Finally Rejects .xxx Domain · · Score: 1

    They may or may not be fundamentalists, but they are American.

  16. Mixed content model... on OpenDocument Voted In By ISO · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When comparisons between formats remark upon mixed content models compared to non-mixed asking "which would you rather transform" expecting the answer of "mixed" you know a lot of people throwing opinions around on this issue have never actually worked transforming XML.

    If you're wanting a human readable document format you have XHTML. Use it and enjoy. If you're producing an interchange format for word processing applications I'll take unambiguous and explicit over ambiguous and implicit even if that is at the expense of human readability.

    The MS model uses a manifest to resolve link references, the ODF uses absolute references... this is criticised by Groklaw on the basis of human readability. Not maintainablity, application use, refactoring or normalisation of data.

    There are valid problems that can be cited for both formats (I wish for instance MS had stuck with XLink), but this is quickly resolving into another round of MS bad, anything else good. It's emotive and is in most cases prejudged before technical merits are weighed.

    I guess I just resent being asked whether I'd prefer to transform a mixed content model by somebody I know has never done so.

  17. Re:Live By The Sword, Die By The Sword on Microsoft, Autodesk Guilty of Patent Infringement · · Score: 4, Insightful

    You're confusing applying for a patent with enforcing a patent. You cited patents that MS had applied (and presumably won some of them) for. Not patents that MS has sued somebody for infringing.

    The argument from Microsoft, IBM, Orale and SUN etc., has been that they have to file for defensive patents or get buried under litigation. Cases like this one prove that they have a point. Somebody in an MS somewhere will be having to explain why MS didn't attempt to aquire this particular patent if it was crucial to them.

    MS has no choice but to play the patent game... unless you can suggest an alternative couse of action for them.

  18. Re:Is there room? on Is There Room for Xandros in the Server Market? · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People want support for more than warm fuzzies... you *boss* wants support so that when you go under a bus he has some chance of keeping his systems up and running when the new guy turns up.

  19. I'd suggest Prolog as a Beginner's Language... on Is Visual Basic a Good Beginner's Language? · · Score: 2

    ...on the basis that it's the fastest route to getting a computer to do something either mildly impressive for the first time or mildly useful for the first time. Also once the Beginner has a reasonable grasp of Prolog they'll have a lot of exposure to principles that would be considered advanced to the Beginner starting with Java/C# or Python/Ruby etc.

  20. enterprise and private sector alike on Operation 'Cyber Storm' Starts Tomorrow · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Since when where enterprise and the private sector anything other than the same thing?.... and more importantly, which one did the OP think refered to government?

  21. Re:I HAVE ONE. SILENT! on New iMac disassembled · · Score: 1

    ha. the only windows I have in my life is now Virtual PC, and as I find good mac replacesments, eventually that app will go the way of the DoDo bird.


    But until you do, you must still resort to using Windows to meet your needs as OS X doesn't do so... am I right in reading that is your current state of affairs until you one day find those replacements?
  22. Such as? on Fedora Core 5 includes Mono · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sorry I'm going to have to call you on this. After years of developing commercially with .NET I've never once had to make a native call. I'd be interested to know what activities you think routinely require this.

  23. Re:Except... on ATI X1800 CrossFire Cards Reviewed · · Score: 1

    There is no game out there that a dual 7800 GT SLI system cannot run at any res, with full graphics turned on.


    You don't play Everquest 2 do you?
  24. Strawman argument... on Why Can't Microsoft Just Patch Everything? · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The initial post is a strawman argument...

    If smaller software companies can patch all of their bugs serious or minor, ZDNet's George Ou asks ...which predicate the argument on the notion that small software companies patch all their bugs.

    So if I go looking for bugs in say the Opera browser I wont find any, because small companies patch all their bugs?

    Nobody patches all their bugs; not small companies, and not large companies. The argument is a piece of sophistry that simply sets up another round of MS bashing. A fun sport, but it shouldn't be mistaken as anything exccept sport.

  25. Comparisons with the .NET version of Quake2? on Quake2 Ported to Java, Play Via the Web · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can we get a comparison of the Java and .NET ports of this?

    The .NET port can be found at http://www.vertigosoftware.com/Quake2.htm