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User: gimbo

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Comments · 77

  1. Re:Commercial opportunity? on Professional Audio on Linux? · · Score: 2

    Because Open Source is at least half the point of linux, in many people's minds (including mine).

  2. Re:So What ? on Cutting Out the Middle Men in Scientific Publishing · · Score: 2

    > well, except that the opening blurb
    > distinctly talks about a bunch of peer
    > reviewers quiting. The implication that they
    > are "the middleman" is obviously wrong if you
    > apply outside knowlege to what's said, but
    > not from a plain reading.

    No! The peer reviewers, ie the editors, are not the middlemen - the people who own and publish the journals are.

    Look: The peer reviewers are members of the scientific community. The publishers are businessmen. The peer reviewers in this article who "quit" haven't said they want to stop reviewing or do away with peer review, they've just said they're not willing to work within the framework imposed by the journals (which they do not run) any longer. The middleman being cut out is the dead tree publisher.

    Hope that makes it clearer...

  3. Re:Please Remember on Cutting Out the Middle Men in Scientific Publishing · · Score: 2

    Good point about the slashdot effect, but on the other hand, how often does slashdot link to an actual peer-reviewed academic paper as opposed to a magazine article or just plain cool site?

    I'm just thinking that on the whole with this stuff, the content's going to be so "dry" as to make it unappetising for a mass audience.
    I agree with your freenet thoughts, mind. :-)

    -Andy

  4. Re:Thats all good and well... on Cutting Out the Middle Men in Scientific Publishing · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Maybe the subscription fees currently being paid to the dead-tree publishers would help?

    Also, a fat pipe may cost you, but most academic institutions already have them, and anyway how fat a pipe do you need to host a website whose content is of real interest to at most a few thousand people worldwide? We're not talking google (or even slashdot) here.

    -Andy

  5. Re:So What ? on Cutting Out the Middle Men in Scientific Publishing · · Score: 5, Insightful

    > Good, but the editor at first was the one separating good studies from stupid ones...

    Well, no, not really. The whole idea in a peer-reviewed scientific journal is that the people performing the editing are experts in the field (ie peers of the person/people submitting the article for publication), not employees of the company which publishes the journal.

    There's no suggestion of doing away with peer review.

    > Will Scientists be able to apply this instead of the usual bickering ?

    No, they'll still bicker... :-)

    -Andy

  6. Re:What's the deal with LOTR? on Lord of the Rings Theatrical Trailer · · Score: 2

    Also, can you imagine trying to mobilise a force of ents for this purpose? Hoom...

  7. Re:Show me... on Linux on the Desktop · · Score: 2

    Aha, now I learn why I have a "No Score +1 Bonus" option when I'm posting: if I post at 2 and a moderator thinks it's over-rated, I lose karma. Makes sense.

  8. Re:Show me... on Linux on the Desktop · · Score: 1

    Oh yeah and the documentation sucks too.

  9. Re:Show me... on Linux on the Desktop · · Score: 2

    What are you on about? Kylix is just Delphi for Linux, and, speaking as somebody who uses both Kylix and Python/Qt in their day to day work, I'll add that it sucks. Oh, sure, the form designer's nice and the debugger's nice but alas under all that you have to code in Pascal, which compared to python is just laughable. Memory leaks here we come!

  10. Run-down of virus capabilities on New (More) Annoying Microsoft Worm Hits Net · · Score: 2

    I hope Mo won't mind me forwarding this...

    ----- Forwarded message from Mo McKinlay -----

    From: Mo McKinlay
    Subject: Re: [uknot] Today's Virus
    To: uknot@uk.com
    Date: Tue, 18 Sep 2001 17:18:46 +0100
    X-Virtual-Domain: redirected for markl@ftech.net
    X-Virtual-Domain: redirected for hamster@vom.tm

    On Tue, Sep 18, 2001 at 04:36:11PM +0100, Joel Rowbottom wrote:

    > This seems to be the culprit:
    >
    > Concept Virus(CV) V.5, Copyright(C)2001 R.P.China

    It is.

    It's also known as "w32.nimda.mm". From what I can tell, it's delivered
    by:

    a) visiting an infected site while using vulnerable browser+e-mail
    client
    b) recieving e-mail from infected host
    c) IIS directory traversal exploit (a la codeblue, which I'm informed
    was never seen in the wild)
    d) open SMB/CIFS shares

    It then goes on to:

    * perform *numerous* registry hacks - it seems to alter the nameserver
    setting of the TCP interface.

    * append a small piece of malicious javascript to your default webpage
    so that attack vector (a) happens.

    * alter the security on your default shares

    * alter the performance logging configuration

    * attempt to propagate itself to addresses in your /24, then /16.

    * attempt to propagate itself via e-mail

    * attempt to propagate itself to open SMB/CIFS shares

    * I've had reports that uses tftp to grab something.. can't ascertain
    what/from where, though. this could be confusion.

    * it references winzip32.exe for some purpose (could support the
    previous report)

    * alters your startup parameters to ensure it's re-run at boot time.

    That's what I can gather from the various reports, and from scanning the
    readme.exe.

    Mo.

    --
    Mo McKinlay mmckinlay@gnu.org http://ekto.org
    "but every time you call a function a object orientated fairy dies"
    -- Richard Palmer, spod.
    GnuPG/PGP Key: pub 1024D/76A275F9 2000-07-22

    ----- End forwarded message -----

  11. Re:Why text? on Simplicity In the Age Of The GUI · · Score: 2

    > For example, think about stdout and stderr.
    > In Unix, you need two separate streams.

    Yes, they're two seperate things. This is a good thing because you can treat them seperately if you need to, or treat them as one if you want. It's really handy.

    > Interleaving them is a bad idea because then
    > you can't tell text in one stream from text
    > in the other.

    Interleaving them is a good idea when you don't care whether what you're looking at is ordinary output or an error. It's a bad idea only when you need to tell the two apart, and then you can seperate them. But in that case you don't need to interleave them, you just redirect them to seperate places, as in the following examples.

    # Interleaved output:
    /bin/foo

    # stderr to a text file, stdout to less:
    /bin/foo 2> /tmp/foo.err | less

    # stdout and stderr to seperate text files:
    /bin/foo > /tmp/foo.out 2> /tmp/foo.out

    # Same as above, but also pipe stdout to less:
    /bin/foo 2> /tmp/foo.err | tee /tmp/foo.out | less

    Beatifully simple once you understand what's going on, and modules for achieving similar things exist in, eg, perl and python - and many other languages no doubt.

    > You could have a single stream of output if
    > each item in the stream were, let's say, a
    > Text object or an Error object. You could
    > then, in the next application down the pipe,
    > choose to examine either Text object or
    > Error objects, or pay attention to both.

    How is this better than having two seperate streams, each of which consists only of ASCII characters, which are easily examinable, easily understood, easily printed, etc? Your Text and Error "objects" (whatever you mean by that) are just adding an unnecessary layer of abstraction, exactly the kind of complication that makes computers hard to program and hard to use. When you want to read text what could be simpler than, er, plain text? It's an absolute godsend!

    > Also, the interleaving of Text and Error
    > objects would convey useful information;
    > something that's harder with two independent
    > streams.

    So, contrary to what you said earlier, interleaving ordinary messages and error messages is sometimes desirable? Good, I'm glad you see that. But tell my why that's harder with two independent streams??? You get them interleaved by default!!!

    Am I totally misunderstanding you? It just seems that you're overcomplicating things in a big way...

  12. Good summary/snippets page on Attacks On US Continued Reports · · Score: 2

    This page has a good summary list of news snippets from various sources, and it's updated fairly regularly:

    http://www.gweep.net/~leaf/wtc.txt

  13. Re:cnn report on World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked · · Score: 2

    Good summary/snippets on this page (updated irregularly):

    http://www.gweep.net/~leaf/wtc.txt

  14. More pictures on World Trade Towers and Pentagon Attacked · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here are some more pictures, obtained from Sky News - scary stuff...

  15. Absinthe & Red Bull on The Glories of Red Bull · · Score: 5

    Great... Absinthe was only just recently made legal again in Britain. Now I have to worry about not being able to drink it with Red Bull? Gaah!

    (Btw absinthe + red bull glows flourescent green under ultraviolet light - nice!)
    --

  16. Re:Not surprising Really on Afghanistan Bans Internet · · Score: 2

    US-Pakistan relations aren't that great.

    Check out this article about the difficulty of US counterterrorism in the area - you might find it enlightening.

    Quote:

    "Where the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin are concerned, Pakistan and the United States aren't allies. Relations between the two countries have been poor for years, owing to American opposition to Pakistan's successful nuclear-weapons program and, more recently, Islamabad's backing of Muslim Kashmiri separatists. Bin Ladin's presence in Afghanistan as a "guest" of the Pakistani-backed Taliban has injected even more distrust and suspicion into the relationship."
    --

  17. Re:I'm a little confused here... on MySQL.com vs. MySQL.org? · · Score: 2

    The press release doesn't say NuSphere is obscure, it says that the www.mysql.org site is obscure.

    It's going to remain obscure, too, if you have to register to download source, or even read documentation.
    --

  18. Re:Alexander Technique on What Do You Do To Relieve Lower Back Pain? · · Score: 2

    True, habits aren't always the cause of the problem - but the question referred to "hours of hunching over a keyboard and coding away". For that kind of problem, there's no quesiton in my mind that AT would be a fantastic idea.

    -Andy
    --

  19. Re:The best advice comes from ... on What Do You Do To Relieve Lower Back Pain? · · Score: 2

    Your doctor will prescribe painkillers, and maybe if you're lucky a course of physiotherapy. You'll be attacking the symptoms, not the cause.

    Alexander Teachers are trained professionals - they train for three years and continue training for the rest of their careers.

    Don't just write it off because you've never heard of it.
    --

  20. Alexander Technique on What Do You Do To Relieve Lower Back Pain? · · Score: 5

    If you're interested in attacking the cause of the problem rather than just the symptoms, you might want to investigate Alexander Technique .

    The basic idea behind the technique is that we build up bad habits of usage in our bodies, and that they are what lead to these problems - so if we can correct these usage patterns then we can prevent problems rather than just treat them. Unfortunately it's hard to correct our habits, because they're, er, habitual. :-) But with patience and the help of a skilled teacher, progress can be made.

    Painkillers, massage, chiropracters, etc. are all well and good, but ultimately you're only treating the symptons. This is true even of massage - sure, you might get rid of the tension that's causing the back pain, but if it's you that's putting that tension there, you're going to put it back there and start the cycle again. Alexander Technique is about breaking the cycle.

    My experience: I'm a programmer, and I've sufferred from both back pain and wrist pain increasingly over the last couple of years which is why I went looking for a solution. I've been a student of the technique for about six months now, and it's definitely helping me. It's put me in touch with my body in that I can now recognise when and where I'm holding excess tension, and it's also teaching me how to go about correcting it properly. (Half of the problem is that we have a "deranged" sense of what our own bodies are doing, so very often the right thing to do feels wrong, and the thing that feels right is actually wrong!).

    These days my back and wrists simply don't hurt me as much as they used to. That's not the end of the story though, because it's a holistic process. For example, I also discovered that when I'm driving, I clench my jaw, ramming my tongue up behind my teeth. There's no good reason for doing that, so I'm learning to stop. It's a long process, but it's definitely working - and helping.

    The only problem with the technique is that it's pretty expensive (mainly because it's taught one-to-one) - but I consider it to be an investment in my future health, and hey, as a programmer I can afford it. ;-)
    If you're really serious about sorting out your back pain or RSI, I heartily encourage you to give it a shot.

    Best of luck,

    -Andy
    --

  21. Re:Compression on How I Completed The $5000 Compression Challenge · · Score: 2

    But tomorrow morning, I shall be sober.

    Oh, hang on, that's not right.
    --

  22. Re:Compression on How I Completed The $5000 Compression Challenge · · Score: 2

    def test():
    print 'so what do the other modes do?'
    this_is_the_example_for('code')
    return("cool, works the way I'd hope")

    if __name__ == '__main__':
    test()

    --

  23. Re:Compression on How I Completed The $5000 Compression Challenge · · Score: 2

    Heh - interesting: I've never used anything other than "Plain Old Text" (including on this message - but spot the italics!).

    Strange... Hey ho, live and learn I guess.
    --

  24. Re:Compression on How I Completed The $5000 Compression Challenge · · Score: 2

    Slightly over-zealous use of "Submit" without previous use of "Preview", methinks. ;-)

    BTW, you can use < to get "less than", like this:

    <

    This is very very standard stuff in HTML.


    --

  25. Re:No point without COM on Chili!Soft ASP Port to FreeBSD? · · Score: 2

    It may "do COM", but my point is that you'll have to roll your own. You won't be able to use any of the (many, many) currently available COM components from the win32 world - which, I assert, are what make ASP tolerable in the first place.

    -Andy
    --