True enough, but when you do need it you really need it.

Case in point. The project I'm working on at the moment has no connection to the internet and I needed to get some Perl modules built. CPAN doesn't help to much under these circumstances, especially not if the mandated build tool is maven. We're running Solaris without the GNU tool chain so getting things to build was a little challenging. Without access to the source code I wouldn't have been able to tweak things to get them building under our environment, let alone track down a failing #DEF that pointed to another #DEF that was defined in a third file.

So no, from a purely pragmatic perspective, most of the time you don't need access to the source code but if you do, not having access can be a complete show-stopper.

Nick

Yep, it's a UK thing, though it has some form http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pants.

Oh I don't know about that.

A friend of mine gave me some of that funky native American multi-coloured corn stuff which I duly harvested a few kernels off and stuck in some mud to see what would happen. At the moment I've got 5 (of 5 kernels planted) apparently healthy corn plants growing in a bucket in the back garden.

It's a bit early in the year to see whether I'll get any kind of harvest from them but it's looking fairly hopeful so far. Of course, I'm only doing this for the fun of it so I don't know how well it'd work on a larger scale but a 100% germination rate is pretty rare, even (or even especially) for seeds that have been bought specifically for growing produce from.

Given the material is tunable and x-rays are just another wavelength then I don't see why it can't be used. However, as the material merely guides the light rather than lengthening its wavelength, it would cause x-rays to be concentrated onto your retina which may not be the effect you were after.

Nick

Now that was strange. I went and looked up the River Severn, the longest river in the UK and home to the second biggest bore in the world and it's a landmark feature of type 'stream'. What on earth does place need to do to get classed as a river?

So the Empire of Murdoch can't emtirely dominate in the UK due to the BBC

So The Sun, the UK's most popular paper and owned by the Empie of Murdoch, changes its support from Labour to the Conservatives

And the BBC's board back down.

Abso-bloody-lutely marvellous. Now we can have news of the quality and independence served to the US by Fox.

*> Ever heard of input sanity checking? It was very popular in the say, 60's, 70's and 80's.

Exactly! Guard the borders of your application, regardless of where those borders are: file, UI, webservice, whatever. Do it right at the border and only when you're sure it's not going to blow a hole in the system, then let it through.

And always use whitelists.

Y'know I wonder if the whole Witch thing needs to become a corollary fo Godwin's law?

Us Witches are perfectly capable of hexing you until you glow if you get too annoying ;).

Whilst I can agree with you about increasing specialisation leading to the loss of a sufficient number of peers to give an effective peer review I can't see how there's a link between this and capitalism.

Colour me stupid by all means but where is that link.

Two words. Steam Punk.

Is anyone really surprised? There are people out there who still don't believe that Dad's Army was an early example of reality TV. Government competence levels have not improved in the ensuing years.

PC Pro are a UK based magazine. I used to subscribe until about 1997 when the pro-Microsoft bias got too galling.

Strangely they've just rung me up asking of I want to try out a new subscription. The answer is no, always will be from now on, I prefer my reporting with a lot less bias. This is why I rely on /. for all my IT news.