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Comment Re:Google map it (Score 2, Informative) 560

I doubt that, from what I can tell this radio transmission uses AM high frequency. MF/HF (which are used by this and other typical radio broadcasts) won't travel that much through water. For communication with submarines VLF and ELF is used as it has decent penetration, plus because of the very low transmission rates (data rates) that can be achieved audio/voice transmission isn't possible so they have to rely on simple text messages.

See this as an example.

Comment Re:Is he bloody stupid? (Score 1, Informative) 447

The big names have treated the single player PC gamer rather well of late: Bioshock, Dragon Age, Fallout, Mass Effect, etc

Bioshock, console port. Fallout 3, console port. Dragon Age, console port. (Dragon Age is probably the only one that is on an equal footing, all the others are after thoughts) Mass Effect, console port, etc.

Comment Re:On2 video patents (Score 1) 399

You assume On2 is a small dinky company, but it isn't. It's a part of Google now remember. I'm sure Google hold more than their fair share of patents too to turn this into a game of patent nuclear warfare.

$290 million is chump change? And that's just one of the cases MS lost. $290 million there, another couple of hundred here and it all adds up.

Comment On2 video patents (Score 4, Insightful) 399

You know, On2 has been around a while now in the video codec game. I wonder how many patents they hold that MPEG-LA are violating with their video codecs. If MPEG-LA goes up against Google/On2 chances are they'll retaliate with patents that MPEG-LA is infringing upon.

I'm surprised no one has thought of this (at least all the news posts I've seen), that MPEG-LA may be opening themselves up to some pretty serious patent retaliation.
Security

Submission + - What security policy and processes do you use? (slashdot.org) 1

EvilMonkeySlayer writes: Recently we had a big multi-billion dollar four letter Japanese company install some very expensive software and hardware on our premises. Unfortunately the engineers who did the installing also brought a virus in and managed to install that onto their very expensive server.

Through processes i'd put in and a bit of luck the server that they installed was the only thing infected. I'd like to say this was the first time this has occurred but this has happened in the past where a third party who installed a piece of hardware has brought in a virus. I've got a decent security in depth set-up so much so that none of our machines has never been infected either through employees or cracking attempts on our public/private servers and workstations. However, it seems once every so often when we have a third party bring in their own server/machine that we've purchased they will inevitably infect said machine.

I have pressed managers in the past at our company to inform any engineers that they must pass any laptops, flash drives etc by me before connecting them up to our network or to another pc. However, they have typically neglected to inform them. Case in point an engineer decided to connect an infected flash drive to one of the workstations which is how I found out about the virus in the first place since the workstation AV blocked the virus and informed me immediately at which point I rushed over and forbid him from using it.

I have been talking to the company MD and he's talking of getting any engineers who come on site to sign a document stating that their computers are virus free etc.

I am wanting to literally make it very much clear to everyone and any third party that if they bring in a computer/flash drive it MUST pass by me first.

Unfortunately I can't always hold the hands of these engineers as I'm the only IT guy in the entire company, so often I may not be available or in a different part of one of our two buildings.

Also, the engineers installed a web server so customers can login remotely for the system. However, the web server is an older version of Apache (2.2.9) running on windows. I have forbidden this machine from having external access until in the words of the account manager for the four letter company "we're waiting to hear back from Japan because the software needs to be updated from them" which doesn't fill me with confidence especially for something that needs to be updated relatively frequently. (contractually wise me updating Apache on this windows server is in a grey area...)

What policy or methods do you guys use to enforce the rules?

I've talked of sending a very clear letter to all the managers from the MD that if they do not inform any third party that they must pass any computers/flash drives through me first that there will be serious consequences. (for example docking of wages, sacking etc)

Comment If it is peaceful... (Score 3, Insightful) 1032

Then you don't go building a uranium processing plant into a mountain.

There are only two reasons you want to build a uranium processing plant in a mountain:

A. It's bomb proof, in which case why are you worried about it getting bombed if it's purely for peaceful processes?
B. You're Dr. Evil.

I think we can safely say it's likely A, although I wouldn't rule out B with Ahmadinejad.

Comment Re:Socially progressive... (Score 1, Insightful) 625

Umm, the reason it exists is because as you may have heard Germany had a little bit of bother with nationalism around the 1930's and 1940's. It has nothing to do with social progressives and all to do with that early to mid 20th century problem.

Regardless of whether the German government is left, right or liberal that law would still exist.

Comment Re:Heh, some things never change... (Score 1) 331

Actually the user interface to Lotus Symphony is pretty decent. (better than OO's anyway)

Its problems are that it takes an ice age to start and its OO.org code is from OpenOffice 2 so it's always playing catch up for the file formats.

What's needed is someone to do similar what Apple did with khtml. Get something like koffice, improve the code even more, stick a good user interface on there and make sure it launches relatively quickly.

At the moment i'm in the process of gradually moving over the company I work for from Office 2000 to Open Office. The single consistent biggest complaint (apart from a certain office suite file compatibility) is the speed (and lack thereof) of its launch time.

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