Posts by Avalanche 133 publicly visible posts • joined 16 Apr 2008
As far as I know, the DelFly of the Delft University of Technology (and another project by David Lentink of the Delft University and Wageningen University) was earlier (maybe even the first): http://www.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=861eb007-c9e5-4f7e-a9b3-a81d36b3a32f
See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=NL&hl=nl&v=rmf3qWqox7k at around 5:50
But probably since it didn't happen in the States, it did not exist.
Reminds me of an orbital mechanics simulation I programmed in Pascal (in high school btw). The most fun was to put in the right numbers to have all planets slingshotted out of the the solar system.
Of course most of those effects were (partly) from my limited understanding of orbital mechanics, and due to rounding issues inherent to floating point numbers, but nevertheless I can see why astronomers would enjoy simulating this :)
Although the ruling may seem odd, it is perfectly understandable:
1) The website owner represented himself without a laywer
2) The website owner told the judge that technically they would be able to 'fix' the problem by changing their page
As a result the judge ruled that the website owner should fix the problem because he himself said he would be able to do that. Also AFAIK the judge did not rule on guilt, just on fixing it.
If the website owner had used a lawyer, he would probably never have done point 2, and then most likely the judge would have ruled differently. So the person to blame for this ruling is not the judge, but the stupid site owner.
I thought I read something about this before on the Dutch site tweakers.net. As far as I recall only some Americans of Indian descent were in uproar. The game itself was developed by Indian developers and is specifically marketed in India and Hindu's in India did not see any problem with the game.
Over here if I want to pay different people in different countries with different banks, I only need to talk to my own bank, give them the right account number + BIC/IBAN code + amount to pay and everything will work out just fine....
May be things are different in America, but to me it sounds like a cheap excuse.
The assignment of IP addresses in classes has been deprecated since 1993 when CIDR (Classless Inter-Domain Routing) was adopted in RFC 1517. Stop using that term. It is ancient tech, even before the introduction of internet to the masses. I even believe that most of the Class assignments done in the past have been reverted.
@Andy Bright:
You seem to think that JavaScript and Java are the same thing. It is not. Most problems in Firefox stem from *JavaScript*, and Sun has (and had) nothing to do with.
The only thing they have in common is that when Sun released Java in '95, Netscape thought they could use the hype by rebranding their LiveScript product to JavaScript.
I think it is rather naive to think that using open source and cutting projects up into smaller projects will automagically fix all problems.
First of all, most of these projects are bespoke work and there won't be any 'existing' open- or closed-source solutions available.
Second of all, even though smaller projects make managing complexity easier, it won't be easy getting a working, complete solution on the rails that should have a large scope (I have seen systems that were built piecemeal by one company and even then there a problems with data-consistency and -compatibility between various parts and/or systems).
Typically, every article on the The Register that is related to Java seems to be set in a negative tone, even in this article the 'performance'-dead horse is beaten once again, even though the real Java performance was greatly improved with Java 1.3 (about 10 years ago!) and since then only improved incrementally with a tweak here and there. It looks like that The Register has never actually done any real work with Java.
"a flag with stars representing the founding members on a blue background"
No it doesn't, the flag is the symbol of the council of Europe, which is both older and has more members than the EU. The EU has 'borrowed' the flag from the council of Europe. Also the number has nothing to do with the number of founders of the EU
You might want to read up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Europe
@Britt Johnston:
> The Hague or Guantanamo spring to mind: too bad the Hague
> ducked the question.
The Hague was not involved. The ECHR is not in The Hague, but in Strasbourg.
I think you are confused with the ICC or one of the other international courts housed in The Hague
@Dan McVittie:
> 3. Maybe I missed the point (as a US reader), but it was the European court
> that stopped his appeal, so why the grousing about Labor? If it was a UK
> court that would make sense to me. Just trying to understand that bit.
Citizens of countries within the European Union can appeal decisions of the highest court in their country at various European courts, in this case the European Court of Human Rights. As I read it, the ECHR decided that there was no case for them to decide about (either because it was outside their power, or because it had no merit).
The fact the British are grousing on Labour, is that a Labour government signed the (unbalanced) treaty with the US that made the extradition without solid evidence possible in the first place.
I don't exactly see how bundling it with Netbeans 6.1 will harm it. I'd like some elaboration on your reasoning.
I think that having toolsupport is like Netbeans is a big necessity, so I think that will actually help JavaFX.
On the other hand, I don't really believe in the RIA-hype, so I don't really care either way.
I live in the Netherlands, and as people know: lots of people riding bikes here and almost no one wears a helmet. As it is, most accidents involving cyclists are usually side impact from a car, and the helmet would not have helped. On the other hand, here we have a lot cycling paths (either free-laying or a reserved strip on the main road), which probably makes it a whole lot safer then in countries without a developed cycling-culture.
When I was in school I had to ride 30 km by bike daily (15km to school, and 15km back) and had some 'accidents' (linking of handlebars with the friend next to you, slippery roads, racing cyclists who don't yield). In my experience, you usually are able to break your fall and as a result are more likely to hurt your hands, arms or knees (or maybe your balls) then your head.
In my opinion the benefits of a bicycle helmet is grossly overrated (as almost all other Dutch seem to think), I only think they can have some benefit for:
1) kids: inexperience and small posture will make it easier for them to hit their head, and the helmet will probably not save more lives, but prevent them from crying (negative effect in the Netherlands: more likely to be bullied by other kids without helmets)
2) racing cyclists: racing in a large group of cyclists makes it more likely that you cannot anticipate and break your fall, or that someone in behind you drives over you
As far as I know, this is not about ID cards, but about online identity schemes such as the Dutch DigID service, which provides a single sign-on scheme for national and local governments. In the case of DigID this consists of a (self-chosen) loginname, a password and (optionally) authorization SMS-codes.
The ID is that if I work or live in another EU country, I can use my Dutch DigID to get access to online government services of that country.
The reason the gates (one or more) are always open is because the OV-chipkaart is still in the trial phase, as a result people with the old 'strippenkaart' (paper multi-ticket that you need to stamp for the number of zones + 1) or OV yearcard without chip also need to be admitted, since Amsterdam is famous for 'zwart rijders', there are extra admittance checks.
Also by now all cards have been cracked, so people can travel on your expense.
Also @other people claiming supremacy for the oyster card: that is exactly the same system as the Dutch OV-chipkaart. And cross-checking data might work to suspend cards after the fact, but the PR nightmare, support costs is not to be forgotten. Also if a auto-recharge card is cloned, that money is written from your bankaccount automatically; trying to prove you were not the one to recharge that card is rather hard.
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