Comment Juniper... (Score 1) 322
displacing Cisco quite fast at my work now. Very capable, makes a noise like a WW2 heavy bomber though.
Comment September 13th, 1999 (Score 1) 274
Pah! I had write access to the system status page at my workplace on that fateful day in 1999, and posted "MASSIVE NUCLEAR EXPLOSION - MOON TORN OUT OF EARTH ORBIT - HURLED INTO OUTER SPACE". Nobody even got the reference
Submission + - Guy Kewney has died (pcpro.co.uk)
gdav writes: Guy Kewney, a very early journalist and commentator of the personal computer era, has died. His blog is here, including sad final updates from his daughter; his recent articles for The Register are here, but his heroic era coincided exactly with the heyday of the UK mag Personal Computer World.
Comment Consider getting a Visitor Oyster Card in advance (Score 1) 1095
Details here - it will make your use of public transport (bus, tube etc) faster and cheaper - you just touch it to open the barriers. Oh, and leave the laptop, there are plenty of internet cafes.
Comment I beg your pardon! (Score 1) 507
Comment For houses with a mixture of BS1363 (Score 1) 711
and the various sizes of BS546, you needed the magnificent Fitall Plug, which had twelve pins in total!
Voyager Clue Points To Origin of the Axis of Evil 293
KentuckyFC writes "Cosmologists have been scratching their heads over the discovery of a pattern imprinted on the cosmic microwave background, the radiation left over from the Big Bang. This pattern, the so-called Axis of Evil, just shouldn't be there. Now an independent researcher from Canada says the pattern may be caused by the boundary between the Solar System and interstellar space where there is a sharp change in pressure, temperature and density of ions in space. Known as the termination shock, astronomers had thought this boundary was spherical. But last year, data from the Voyager spacecraft which have crossed the boundary, showed it was asymmetric. The new thinking is that the termination shock acts like a giant lens, refracting light that passes through it. Any distortion of the lens ought to show up as a kind of imprinted pattern on an otherwise random image. But the real eye-opener is that as the shape of the termination shock changes (as the Solar Wind varies, for example), so too should the pattern in the microwave background. And there is tentative evidence that this is happening too (abstract)."
Comment If we had never had the Spreadsheet (Score 1) 407
Then we would never have appreciated the benefits of W-W-Windows 386 !
Comment Re-entry? Nope. (Score 1) 527
Impact on hard ground from ten miles up? Nope.
Comment New York City (Score 1) 665
from Earthman, Come Home by James Blish. Powered by four spindizzies and helmed from the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Pure class.
U2's Manager Calls For Mandatory Disconnects For Music Downloaders 658
sleeplesseye writes "In a speech at the Midem music industry convention in Cannes, Paul McGuinness, longtime manager of the band U2, has called on Internet service providers to immediately introduce mandatory French-style service disconnections to end music downloading, and has urged governments to force ISPs to adopt such policies. McGuinness criticized Radiohead's 'In Rainbows' pay-what-you-want business model, saying that 'the majority of downloads were through illegal P2P download services like BitTorrent and LimeWire'. He also accused ISPs, telcos, device makers, and numerous specifically named companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building 'multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it', and of being 'makers of burglary kits' who have made 'a thieves' charter' to steal money from the music industry. The full text of his speech has been posted on U2's website."
Submission + - The Golden Compass trailer online
gdav writes: The first trailer for the film of Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass (Northern Lights) is online here (.mov).
Data Storing Bacteria Could Last Millennia 252
PetManimal writes "Computerworld has a story about a new technology developed by Keio University researchers that creates artificial bacterial DNA that can carry more than 100 bits of data within the genome sequence. The researchers claimed that they encoded "e= mc2 1905!" on the common soil bacteria, Bacillius subtilis. The bacteria-based data storage method has backup and long-term archival functionality." The researchers say "While the technology would most likely first be used to track medication, it could also be used to store text and images for many millennia, thwarting the longevity issues associated with today's disk and tape storage systems ... The artificial DNA that carries the data to be preserved makes multiple copies of the DNA and inserts the original as well as identical copies into the bacterial genome sequence. The multiple copies work as backup files to counteract natural degradation of the preserved data, according to the newswire. Bacteria have particularly compact DNA, which is passed down from generation to generation. The information stored in that DNA can also be passed on for long-term preservation of large data files."
Journal Journal: Missing CNet Editor Found Dead
From Game Freaks 365:
James Kim, a CNet.com editor that went missing, was found dead at 3:00 p.m. ET Wednesday. His family had been found alive after they went missing November 25, 2006. The Kim family went on vacation to the Pacific Northwest, but got lost when they were returning to Portland. Searchers found Kati Kim, 30, and their 4 year old and 7 month old daughters, Penelope and Sabine. The family was airlifted to a hospital i
Submission + - Missing CNet Editor Found Dead
kbell29 writes: From Game Freaks 365:
James Kim, a CNet.com editor that went missing, was found dead at 3:00 p.m. ET Wednesday. His family had been found alive after they went missing November 25, 2006. The Kim family went on vacation to the Pacific Northwest, but got lost when they were returning to Portland. Searchers found Kati Kim, 30, and their 4 year old and 7 month old daughters, Penelope and Sabine. The family was airlifted to a hospital in Grants Pass. All three were in good condition, but James Kim was still missing and found dead today.
