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Comment Re:I am SHOCKED! (Score 1) 323

I don't know about Japan (but I imagine you are wrong), but Germany is not an "occupied country" any more. One of the side-effects of reunification was a peace treaty formally ending that status. With the USSR giving up control of "their part" the western allies had no reason not to do the same. Margaret Thatcher was less than enthusiastic about this but could do little once George Bush the Elder (I think it was him and not Clinton) had made the decision. Thatcher was dumped around then anyway and John Major was a lot less bigoted.

Going back to the actual story here: At the time the Nazis took power, a large proportion of German scientists were jewish. Once their initial fears proved to be overly optimistic, those who could headed for the exits and were mostly not replaced. At that point German as the "Language of Science" was pretty much dead, losing WW2 just confirmed this.

Comment Re: blocking the networks owners ? (Score 1) 429

Did you read the same synopsis I did? He is not talking about the owners, he is talking about other users coming in and grabbing all the bandwidth in public hotspots.
That would be an extremely useful tool in Germany, the hotspot owner is liable if someone is caught file-sharing over his/her access point. I can see owners wanting to run this, it would have to run under Windows though.

Comment Re:Color me shellshocked! (Score 2) 69

It is.
I ran a sanitised version of the initial exploit in a virtual Konsole, updated and ran it again in a new Konsole. The second time the attempted exploit was rejected, no reboot required.

This was early last week, the day the update became available. What made these muppets wait until they were attacked? Do they have some cretinous system in place where even security-relevant updates have to be scheduled a week in advance?

Comment Re:Codification (Score 1) 95

Back when I took exams - when the world was young and sheep were nervous - kids caught cheating were automatically failed and were in line for other sanctions as well, rather like doping in sport. Why the hell does a/the state need to get involved? An examination board is more likely to be able to keep up with newer ways of cheating than a state which has something codified and inflexible, an examination board is also more likely to be able to understand the subject than a collection of antagonistic lawyers dedicated to opposing whatever their opponents think is a good idea.

A Bulgarian chess player was caught cheating around a year ago. It took a while to work out exactly *how* he was cheating but it had been obvious for months that he was and he was already finding it very difficult to be allowed to play tournaments. The Bulgarian Chess Federation has banned him for life. The system in place worked.

Comment Re:This is Java code (Score 1) 349

Just out of curiosity, when was that particular call (which is depreciated anyway) first implemented? Was it available under Windows 95?
Depreciating it is also annoying - presumably whatever is replacing it has not been around forever so that will prevent it running on "legacy" systems.

(I have never programmed under this environment so I don't know the specifics)

Comment Re:Trolololo (Score 1) 534

I read that series decades ago and seem to remember that there is a twist in the tail.
The way I remember it, the aliens had been created by the devil in order to undermine christian faith. Once that became obvious (some symbols were involved) they ceased to exist. What a strange world-view, I have no idea what Blish's beliefs were.

Comment Re:Bullshit (Score 3, Insightful) 221

There is no perfect security, especially if the attacker is willing to die. The US use attack-drones in a few countries, how well are they set up to defend against them?
When Bush II went to London the Secret Service wanted all kinds of measures taken, including closing part of the London Underground. The mayor at the time said NO. When Bush went to the Frankfurt area as part of the same tour, the Secret Service came up with a laundry list of measures they wanted implemented to reduce the risk, the Germans actually listened and life in a corridor between Frankfurt Airport and Mainz pretty much ground to a halt for a day. Pathetic.

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