To slashdot, thanks for bringing this to my attention! I have far too much data in Amiga archives / disk image formats that previously I had to fire up an emulator to access. With this, and xnview / nconvert along with other tools, I can access my old stuff whenever I want.

The fact it is open source, and deals with rars, and almost every other archive well is an added bonus!

Of course, huge thanks to the author. Donation on its way.

...and I've just noticed that the author provides a lightweight IFF viewer. What a star!

...but wrong.

They say file sharing is bad, mmmkay? Don't do it. They provide examples of what may land you in hot water. One of those was running an unsecured wireless network, which you will be on the hook for: the cheerleader defence does not work!

It's actually good advice. They're not saying "using wifi is a sign of infringement", and no-one with half a clue would dream it said that.

But hey, sensationalist journalism is obviously more important than accuracy or a sound understanding of the basic message that they're trying to get across, and in my view succeeding in. Quite how someone can misinterpret the advice, then get it picked up by slashdot, is beyond me. And no, I'm not new here!

And besides, BC has changed the list - even though I think it's good advice.

To me, Chuck Peddle is an absolute inspiration. He's not done the easy thing, or the materialistic thing, but the right thing many many times in his career.

These were the early days of the computer revolution, and I strongly recommend Brian Bagnell's book, Commodore: A company on the edge, to anyone remotely interested in the era... It's a healthy dose of realism and a perfect antidote to historical revisionism that seems to be coming from a couple of areas in the States...

The guy is a hero, as were the small teams laying the foundations that, ultimately, means we all have more interesting jobs. No article on the 6502 should fail to mention Chuck Peddle and the team at MOStek, which ultimately became part of Commodore... History tells us that what becomes part of commodore burns brightly, but briefly...

Get that book, it's great.

The pope has been found to be catholic, birds fly, fish swim and bears defecate in woods.

This sounded like it might be a fundamental change in something big, but it isn't. As many have already said, anyone with a passing knowledge of chemistry - even misremembered over 19 years like mine - is aware of the underlying reasons and the implications!

It's presented as sensational but it's really not news in any way, shape or form.

It's only a simple AI that's needed, too.

Prime directive: screw the public by charging for everything, do not pay for marketing or advertising by coming up with hare brained schemes that will never pass any safety test or be unacceptable thus causing outrage and guaranteeing free publicity...

I really do wish that the media wouldn't report this attention whoring.

I booked a ferry crossing from the UK to France through Brittany Ferries' website, and since then I've often been presented with adverts for Brittany Ferries. It is actually putting me off, and has made me install Adblock plus. I don't mind adverts: I know that they're needed to try and monetise this crazy thing. What I do object to is being stalked by an advert for something that I've already bought the product for! So, well done, that's me now out of the internet advertising audience. I suspect I'm not the only one who has been pushed over the edge by this...

Customer: Hi, I'm having troubles with ebilling
Demon: OK, let's see if we can help. I just need to take you through security. Can you give me your username
Customer: customer1
Demon: And, without revealing your full password, characters 3 and 5 of... the MD5 hash of your password?
Customer: WTF?
Demon: sorry, that's not right.

In the case where you want to use the same password to authenticate across multiple channels, and use human interaction, storing plain passwords (with appropriate control) is unfortunately still useful. Yes, there's other ways to do it, but people are conditioned to be asked for letters of their password by humans.

Gilbert and Sullivan references on slashdot? Whatever next!

They're Oxford scientists. They created transparent aluminium.

If it's truly mission critical (and if it is, it sounds like your mission is in real danger if you keep dropping bytes!), you could do worse than look at Connect:Direct from Sterling Software. It's the standard transmission software for bits of the core financial transaction world in the UK and with good reason.

Sure it's "only" a secure transmission and there's plenty of free alternatives, but this is one time when I would recommend paying out for the certainty you need... Others will no doubt disagree, but having used a variety of things for mission critical file transmission, C:D is a safe choice.