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Hear hear! A bit of background to the politics of this:

NFTables is brought to you by a group of codes created when Alexey Kuznetsov decided to replaced the low level linux network stack for Linux 2.2 to make it more like what Cisco provided in IOS. The result added whole pile of new functionality to Linux (eg routing rules), and a shiny new highly module traffic control engine. Alexey produced a beautifully written postscript documentation for the new user land routing tools (the "ip" command), and 100 line howto for the far more complex traffic control engine tools (the "tc" command).

Technically it was a was tour de force. But to end users it could at best be called a modest success. Alexey re-wrote the net-utils tools ("ifconfig", "route" and friends) to use the new system, and did such a good job very few bothered to learn the new "ip" command even though the documentation was good and it introduced a modest amount of new features. But real innovation was the traffic control engine, and to this day bugger all people know how to use it.

At this point it could have gone two ways. Someone could have brought tc's documentation up to the same standard Alexey provided for ip, or they could ignore the fact that almost no one used the code already written and add more of the same. They did the latter.

It was also at this time the network code wars started in the kernel. Not many people know that a modest amount of NAT, filtering and so on can be done by Alexey's new ip command. But rather than build on that Rusty Russell just ported the old ipfwadm infrastructure, called it ipchains (and later replaced it with iptables). There was some overlap between Rusty's work and tc, and this has grown over time. For example the tc U32 filter could do most of the packet tests ipchain's introduced over time on day 1. Technically the modular framework provided by tc was more powerful than ipchains, and inherently faster. Tc was however near impossible for mere mortals to use even if they had good documentation. There were some outside efforts to fix this - tcng was an excellent out-of-tree attempt to fix the complexity problems of tc. But in what seems like a recurring theme, it was out of tree and ignored. In contrast, Rusty provided ipchains with the some best documentation on the planet. In the real world the result of these two efforts are plain to see - while man + dog uses iptables, there maybe 100 people on the planet who can use tc.

Another example of the same thing is IMQ. IMQ lets you unleash the full power of the traffic control engine on incoming traffic. (Natively the traffic control engine only deals with packets being sent, not incoming packets - a limitation introduced for purely philosophical reasons). IMQ was very well documented, and heavily used. The people who brought you tc had a list of technical objections to IMQ. I don't know whether they were real or just a case of Not Invented Here, but I'd give them the benefit of the doubt - they are pretty bright guys. So they replaced it with their own in-kernel-tree concoction. (For those of you who don't follow the kernel "in-tree" means it comes with the Linux Kernel. An out-of-tree module like IMQ means at the very least you have to compile the module source, and possibly the entire kernel.) For a while this discouraged the developers of IMQ so much they stopped working on it. If you follow that link, you will see it's back now. Why? Because the thing that replaced it had absolutely no documentation. They never do. So no one could use the replacement. Again, in the end, the thing code that was documented won the day.

By now you might be guess where this is heading. We have two groups in the kernel competing to provide the

with the prevalence of advertising and corporations dominating everything, you can be sure that soon the answer to all questions will be "Pepsi"

http://homepage.smc.edu/nestler_andrew/pepsi.jpg

their userbase growth is still accelerating.

Wow, an AC using a third derivative to argue his case. That's gotta be a first (though oinly for ACs, not for sitting US presidents). Actually, from the first chart I found when googling, it looks as if the userbase has been linearly rising since November 2010, so the rise is not growing, much less accelerating.

Associate's degree is 60 units, generally: http://www.smc.edu/StudentServices/TransferServices/AreasofStudy/Pages/Associate-Degrees.aspx

Resident tuition is $46/unit (wow; it was $21 in 2009...): http://www.smc.edu/EnrollmentDevelopment/Admissions/Pages/Fees.aspx

Without having to run all over the county to do it...

Associate's degree is 60 units, generally: http://www.smc.edu/StudentServices/TransferServices/AreasofStudy/Pages/Associate-Degrees.aspx

Resident tuition is $46/unit (wow; it was $21 in 2009...): http://www.smc.edu/EnrollmentDevelopment/Admissions/Pages/Fees.aspx

Without having to run all over the county to do it...

This guy should be getting his kids The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments, which is a book from 1960s which was banned because it was considered too dangerous, which is now only available as an ebook on the intertubes (it isn't available for sale anywhere, the original publisher took it off the shelves for liability reasons, but it can still be found at various places if you google for it). Although it's quite out-of-date on some of the topics it covers, it's still my favorite lab Chemistry book in the entire World !!

And of course, this isn't a book that should be given to kids without parental supervision, there is actually a very good reason this book was taken off the shelves and no, it's not because some kid blew himself up with it, which may have happened as well (without parental supervision), it's actually much weirder than that. The book was taken off the shelves because some thirteen years old successfully replicated the experiments by Marie Curie detailed in the book.

Now that I've made my recommendation, which I didn't want to get lost in my very long diatribe, here comes my long diatribe which tries to partially answer some of his better points.

Even some of my smartest friends seem to be oddly loyal to the Committee of Ten. They are not able to imagine a universe in which my son does not take chemistry his sophomore year in high school. Seriously guys, dig deep, and you may find some powers of imagination left over from all those years of industrialized schooling and, well, schooling.

Do we really have to dig that hard to imagine a world without Chemistry education? We really don't.

I still find that most people are ignorant about Chemistry (and even Physics and Biology), not that I'm very good at any of those subjects either (I've just been fortunate enough not to be born in a country that ignored Science education), but just to give you an example, my mother doesn't have an education in Chemistry (it wasn't offered during her time, especially for her gender). Had she received a basic education in that subject when she was younger, she would have probably seen through half the medical quackery that she's getting into from the internet. Right now, she's getting convinced left and right, and there is really so much I can do to dissuade her that the people she's listening to are not legitimate medical professionals.

And yes, a Chemistry education would have helped, at least a little bit. Some of those internet quacks do rely on the language of Chemistry that they've cut and pasted from various places, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense on the whole in the context of what they're saying.

Right now, the only education on Chemistry/Physics most of our mainstream population is getting, is through TV dramas and television news. And to a father who doesn't really remember chemistry (even thought he was good at it), he may not see much harm in shows like "Numb3rs", in fact, he's probably glad that such a show (now cancelled) was trying to educate the public about Math, Physics, and even Chemistry at times, while still staying interesting to watch, but he probably didn't even notice the purposeful omissions of real science in favor of increasing the drama to keep the show interesting. Nor does he have much of an idea how misleading that show is going to be to our society, because of what they mis-portrayed on it.

And ultimately, that's the real problem here, we need the citizens in our country (the younger generation at least), to be conversant in Chemistry (and other sciences), so they can help make good personal decisions about their own health, nutrition, and environment, and make good policy decisions about our society, because on the whole that knowledge is certainly not coming from our television or our parents (barring a very few exceptions).

Oh, and the salespeople at Fry's are sooooooo much better than BB...

obligatory...

Mmmmmm pie.

http://homepage.smc.edu/nestler_andrew/pi.jpg

Apparently they can't snag you for contempt charges, but at least in California, they will kick you out of the Jury if they find Jury Nullification. Oh, and this was upheld by California's Supreme Court. Article: Justices Say Jurors May Not Vote Conscience

Old as the hills but still relevant:
Fry's Electronics Employment Application

Yeah yeah...-1 Old Joke

Remember as the IT Guy that you possess specialized knowledge not unlike a doctor or a lawyer: professions where making stuff up is a time honored tradition.

What are you, like, 16 and you just got off your shift at Fry's? You might get away with this a couple times, but as soon as you get caught--and you will, installing MS Office is not a skill on a par with being a doctor or a lawyer, or even high-end janitorial work--you'll look really, really bad, and you'll be the first person they layoff when your bosses need to trim expenses. Comic Book Store Guy and Nick the Computer Guy are funny on TV, but they're funny precisely because no one wants to work with someone like that.

Kids in the future will learn them from the Simpsons, specifically the episode "Lemon of Troy" in season 6. Roman numerals?! They never even tried to teach us that in school.... OK, think, Bart. Where have you seen Roman numerals before? I know: Rocky V. That was the fifth one! So, Rocky 5 [points to V], plus Rocky 2 [points to II], equals Rocky 7 [points to VII], Adrian's Revenge!

rd rr

As Disco Stu once said: "If these trends continue . . . "

Funny, the Lyndon LaRouche people have been camped out on the Santa Monica College campus for months, and nobody seems too concerned...

In the future, the second-graders are stacked in desks three-high, watching an interactive television program titled 'Pepsi Presents Addition And Subtraction', starring aged actor Troy McClure wearing a Star Trek uniform.

Troy: Now, turn to the next problem. If you have three Pepsis and drink one, how much more refreshed are you? You, the redhead in the Chicago school system?

Girl [her face appears picture-in-picture]: Pepsi?

No doubt you've seen this application form.

s/is/eir

It is a regex statement. Essentially, the string typically instructs a language interpreter (PERL, for instance) to search for a pattern and subsequently replace it.
In this case, it is replacing any instances of "is" with "eir"; thus, the following alteration is committed:

Before: but it's always sad to watch someone stoop to this level
After: but it's always sad to watch someone stoop to their level

But my favourite quote, from his homepage, is:

"Moreover, well known equations from mathematics like the Theorem of Pythagoras, the equations for conics and conics sections and the equation from Fermat's last theorem, are all special cases of this formula."

So... a guy who specialises in finding new ways to help bamboo propagate- and mind you, bamboo is pretty prolific on its own, don't let that 'lucky bamboo' (which is not actually bamboo, but a plant of another type entirely) fool you- has now found a new way to describe shapes. Yes, this is important, but it's not the next big thing. Folks have been trying to find ways to describe shapes by equations in images long before this, and while his rush to patent may cause some interesting snarls up ahead, i find it unlikely that he even understands Fermat's last theorem,

Cubem autem in duos cubos, aut quadratoquadratum in duos quadratoquadratos, et generaliter nullam in infinitum ultra quadratum potestatem in duos eiusdem nominis fas est dividere.
Cuius rei demonstrationem mirabilem sane detexi hanc marginis exiguitas non caparet.

But if he does, he'd better post something more mathematical on his website, because he's just landed himself into mathematician waters- and it's sink or swim there, buddy. You don't get to try it again next growing season (Andrew Wiles' revisions notwithstanding), and contrary to what laypeople tend to believe, they still require proof when you walk in and say something crazy like 'Pi is 3.' Even mathemeticians are still arguing over the proofs available. And it's pretty cutthroat, with ten-day conferences, so i bet he's in for some entertaining phone calls.

204mph civic. That was with two seconds of googling.

t.

Milhouse: Oh! Oh! Oh! "Low battery?"

Mrs. Krabappel [sighs]: Whatever.

Partial Credit!

I assume you're talking about this: Math in the Future according to the Simpsons. (I apologize for linking directly to a large file, the guy didn't have <a name> tags on his page.)

In this context, your AC post is actually quite amusing.