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One (simple) dust-cloud accretion program is located here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/accrete/

Accrete is a physical simulation of solar system planet formation,
originally published to Usenet-- probably comp.sources.unix-- in 1991
by Joe Nowakowski. This software is in the public domain.

This simulation works by modelling a dust cloud around a Sun-like star,
injecting a series of masses which collect dust, and form planets.
The simulation then determines what the planetary environments will be
like in terms of temperature, atmospheric composition, and other
factors. The system description is saved to a file named "New.System".

The following output will give a good idea of the end results:

                                                  SYSTEM CHARACTERISTICS
Mass of central star: 1.247 solar masses
Luminosity of central star: 2.875 (relative to the sun)
Total main sequence lifetime: 4339 million years
Current age of stellar system: 3091 million years
Radius of habitable ecosphere: 1.696 AU
[ ... ]
Planet #4:
      Distance from primary star (in A.U.): 1.038
      Eccentricity of orbit: 0.004
      Mass (in Earth masses): 0.383
      Equatorial radius (in Km): 4675.0
      Density (in g/cc): 5.344
      Escape Velocity (in km/sec): 8.08
      Smallest molecular weight retained: 12.16 (CH4)
      Surface acceleration (in cm/sec2): 698.22
      Surface Gravity (in Earth gees): 0.71
      Boiling point of water (celcius): 53.6
      Surface Pressure (in atmospheres): 0.146
      Surface temperature (Celcius): 8.39
      Hydrosphere percentage: 50.46
      Cloud cover percentage: 22.87
      Ice cover percentage: 3.61
      Axial tilt (in degrees): 23
      Planetary albedo: 0.177
      Length of year (in years): 1.06
      Length of day (in hours): 18.14

Like you all aren't using Streamripper... http://streamripper.sourceforge.net/

Pascal Papara's Broadway AROS project has been brought to the Raspberry Pi by Stephen Jones. There's also an ARM6 hosted version of the AROS project available.

Keeping your system up-to-date with security fixes is going to take care of nearly all your ills on the actual level of your LAMP stack. Any decent distribution (Debian Stable, CentOS) can be configured to automatically install security updates.

What is more important is application level security. Are the web frameworks your websites are built on vulnerable to SQL injections?

As mentioned above, leaving the MP off of the LAMP, if possible, is going to greatly reduce your vulnerability surface.

As a sysadmin in charge of security for numerous LAMP servers, I'd recommend using Denyhosts and PSAD

The ISP issues are variable. Mine doesn't have any problems with what I'm uploading to. Worst case you'll have to redirect your port through a service like no-ip.

I rid myself of Launchy when the same functionality came built into Windows. Blaze is much better than Launchy anyhow.

Before I am going to elaborate, yes - technology will be only part of the fix. But technology will be a major part of better security ! Here is my list of security technologies:

Sandboxing:Google Chrome's Sandbox is an excellent example of how to limit damage from faulty code. Much more could be done by using this approach in many other file formats and use cases. Other interesting approaches are AppArmor, SE Linux and Linux Security Modules in general.

Formal Proofs:The problem with sandboxes and operating systems is of course their correctness. If the sandbox has exploitable bugs, it is obviously of little use. It would make a lot of sense for governments to pay for formally verified operating systems,VMs, sandboxes and compilers. And of course for research towards cost reductions in formal verification, as it is currently extremely time-consuming, difficult and expensive.

Memory Safe Programming Languages:The best part of all security issues can be directly blamed to the insecure-by-default approach of C/C++. Buffer overruns, uninitialized pointers accessed, freed pointers accessed, pointers doubly freed and similar issues are responsible for the majority of exploits. Just using memory-safe programming languages such as Spark Ada, Perl, C#, Java or Sappeur (created by myself, see http://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/) would immediately reduce the number of exploitable bugs by at least 60%.

In many application fields you cannot use sandboxes. Think of indexing engines that index the web - by definition a hostile place. It is quite inefficient to start a new indexing process for each and every document crawled.

Virtualization:If you have a properly (ie. no exploitable bugs) implemented virtual machine, this could act like a Sandbox on the operating system level. Unfortunately, as the HB Gary hacks have exposed, current virtual machine technology is not safe enough. Governments could possibly finance verification efforts here, too. (Private companies don't really have a strong incentive to do that from a money-point-of-view)

Research:Clearly, extensive research into security technologies and their application in real-world-scenarios is required. Security technologies must be nicely enmeshed into user's business processes. Overly restrictive or overly time-consuming technologies/approaches will be circumvented by users. A lot of work in how to make security tech actually ergonomic has yet to be done.

I found it strange that an aim in the roadmap was to support the latest GNU binutils [1].. I hope they are trying to adress that piece of GNU dependency too. There is the FreeBSD-project libelf/elftoolchain [2, 3] that could be interesting... [1] https://www.bitrig.org/index.php?title=Roadmap [2] http://wiki.freebsd.org/LibElf [3] http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/elftoolchain/

They're perhaps a little nicer about their acquisitions than Microsoft.

Still, it's quite annoying. I now have five years of chat logs that differ slightly from the pidgin html format. There's an abandoned conversion program, but it lacks a makefile and I'm not keen on figuring out how to get it to compile. If anyone else is working on the same problem please do let me know.

The whole affair makes me really wary about switching to another online chat program, but rolling my own equivalent service seems a bit complex. For the moment I'm symlinking pidgin's history files to my dropbox account, which is probably going to be a viable solution if I feel like installing Pidgin and Dropbox on every computer I want to chat on, or perhaps carry portable versions on a thumb drive. It's too bad meebo isn't an open source project, maybe google can do us that favor.

E16 is being actively maintained. You might want to download the latest and greatest from here if your distro does not provide such. You would have to compile it but IIRC, compiles only take a minute or two.

I find it hard to believe that e16 screwed up your system. Were you running it as root? When I test a new window manager I usually boot to terminal mode, edit my .xinitrc and then run "startx $WM". I was also able to get e16 to start up inside a window which made it very easy to test and tweak while running another window manager.

IMO, the key thing is that the default configuration is very minimal. You need to download some themes. Someday you may want to start tweaking themes but that is a bit of a deep dive. E16 is the most configurable program I've ever encountered. It takes a while to learn how to configure it. There may be some useful guides over on the Gentoo forums.

The next version, e17, has gone stable and many people love it. You might want to give that a try if you haven't already.

If you don't mean text-based games, how about a nice game of chess?

Haha if you think blender can do CAD, you've obviously never used real CAD software. I wish it weren't the case, but currently nothing (including FreeCAD) comes even close to Solidworks. Trust me, I have used all of the following programs:

* FreeCAD - Yeah, not useful.
* HeeksCAD - Sadly also not useful.
* Solidworks - Amazingly amazing. But Windows only, and there is no way to get it for a sane amount of money other than piracy.
* Pro/Engineer - Very good, but a shit interface (Motif!). It used to have Linux support but recently they stopped that and I think updated the interface. And it's called something else now. But if you're going to use something on Windows I don't see why you wouldn't use Solidworks.
* QCad - This is worse than a pencil and paper. I am not joking.
* Sketchup - Yeah, not very useful because it isn't parametric. Once you have set the length of something you can't alter it precisely. Seriously if you've ever used Solidworks or Pro/E you'll be tearing your hair out.
* Creo Co/Create Modelling Personal Edition Lite Free... Ah fuck it. I can never remember the (retarded) name, but this is the only decent free CAD software in existence. Unfortunately it is Windows only (doesn't run in wine), and also non-parametric, so not very useful in practice. (But it is still miles better than Sketchup.) Actually I think they sued sketch-up (or vice versa) because they use the same extrusion interface.

By the way, don't be fooled by fancy screenshots of models like this one: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=File:Screenshot-gcad.jpg
  - those are just imported from other programs.

Formal Verification. Proof your code correct. Works on small pieces of code

Sandboxing. Google Chrome is doing it conceptually very well and could be applied to many more systems

Behavioural Analysis at network chokepoints such as firewalls and fileservers. Malware will be challenged to make its extraction and C&C traffic look like legitimate traffic. Requires competent analysts who actually parse logfiles instead of playing WoW. Must also be capable to write their own Perl analysis programs.

Type-Safe Programming Languages. Conceptual examples are Java, .net, some Ada variants and a language called Sappeur which I created myself.

Appstores with known code authors. Google's Android appstore does not qualify

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_safety http://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/

Beg to differ - Funny code I WRITE MYSELF (unlike you) works, eh? Some "failure", lol...

Additionally - It works well enough to do things YOU have never done, & never will (see below, + "Rinse, Lather, & Repeat")... or, you'd have shown such deeds to your name/credit by now, & YOU can't... lol!

* Face it - You're just not good enough to do that small partial list (certainly NOT BEFORE I did either OR MORE OF THEM), & it shows.

APK

P.S.=> IT's been a pleasure making you "ReAcT", but this one ALWAYS "does the job" even moreso:

So, when you've managed to do MORE, BETTER, & EARLIER of what I have below from a TINY ONLY PARTIAL LIST of some of my "favorites"? Then, you can talk:

"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."

----

Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

AND lastly: http://g-off.net/software/a-python-repeatable-threadingtimer-class where I got other programmer's work WORKING RIGHT (in PyThon no less, which I just started learning only 2 week ago no less) by showing them how to use a "Dummy Proxy Function" as I call it, to make a RepeatTimer class (Thread sub-class really) to take PARAMETERIZED FUNCTIONS, ala:

def apkthreadlaunch():
getnortonsafeweb(sAPKFileName = "APK_1_NortonSafeWeb360Extracted.txt".rstrip())

a =

Beg to differ - Funny code I WRITE MYSELF (unlike you) works, eh? Some "failure", lol...

Additionally - It works well enough to do things YOU have never done, & never will (see below, + "Rinse, Lather, & Repeat")... or, you'd have shown such deeds to your name/credit by now, & YOU can't... lol!

* Face it - You're just not good enough to do that small partial list (certainly NOT BEFORE I did either OR MORE OF THEM), & it shows.

APK

P.S.=> IT's been a pleasure making you "ReAcT", but this one ALWAYS "does the job" even moreso:

So, when you've managed to do MORE, BETTER, & EARLIER of what I have below from a TINY ONLY PARTIAL LIST of some of my "favorites"? Then, you can talk:

"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."

----

Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

AND lastly: http://g-off.net/software/a-python-repeatable-threadingtimer-class where I got other programmer's work WORKING RIGHT (in PyThon no less, which I just started learning only 2 week ago no less) by showing them how to use a "Dummy Proxy Function" as I call it, to make a RepeatTimer class (Thread sub-class really) to take PARAMETERIZED FUNCTIONS, ala:

def apkthreadlaunch():
getnortonsafeweb(sAPKFileName = "APK_1_NortonSafeWeb360Extracted.txt".rstrip())

a =

This point about making password hashing take a whole second is critical. For some reason, the geniuses in charge of our Internet security are totally screwing this up. Take my GPG private key, for example. I have to encrypt the damned thing with a humongous pass phrase, because some dork, who you would expect to know something about security (having written GPG), didn't bother making the private key's decryption key a compute intensive hash of my pass phrase. This allows attackers to do efficient brute-force attacks on our PGP private keys. They don't even have to run the compute intensive RSA algorithm... they just do AES with their password guess and detect if it's correct instantly, because GPG goes to the trouble of providing an instant "Your guess was correct" feature. Worse, sites like github not only allow, but require these insecure PGP keys to be used to log into their systems, even though they have no control over what, if any, password is protecting the user's private keys. I just got a private key from a rather good IT guy recently, and the file was named "ThePasswordIsFoo"! I used to encrypt my freaking OpenVPN keys with a password designed to give you an RSI injury, but the new IT policy is to leave it unencrypted on every Windows machine! And I thought our old SSH on port 22 was scary (actually... that is pretty damned scary). This same problem is true of encrypted documents. The most secure document encryption software I currently know of is my own stupid little tinycrypt algorithm. Do you use encfs, or TrueCrypt? Don't count on any CPU intensive hashing to protect your password. Brute force away!

Instead of leaving your documents wide open to brute force attacks like GPG using Blowfish or AES, it uses the old broken WEB encryption algorithm, RC4, with only a tiny mod: it drops the first 768 bytes of the key stream, which last I checked means no one knows any useful attack against it. It salts the encrypted file with a random 20 byte nonce, and requires about 1 second to compute the hash of the user's password used to do the encryption. Why should average non-security geeks like me have to write our own encryption software for documents, and live with 20+ character passwords on everything that uses GPG? Couldn't we at least count on GPG to get it right?

On top of all that, I run freaking Windows, meaning that I have no clue what software is sniffing for my passwords. I'm careful about what I install, but I installed ZIP, for example, a clear nasty piece of spy/annoy-ware, and Skype, one of the worst security leaks in history. God forbid that I install a free game or anything really stupidly dangerous. I sure hope all those laptops employees carry back and forth from home don't have any dangerous exe files installed :-P A couple friends who actually study security technology rave about the security tech in Windows. But I still press the "Yes" button on that freaking "Allow this program to make changes to your computer" dialog multiple times a day.

What a mess! So, let's drag freaking Linked-In over the coals! Then, let's have a quick look in the mirror. GPG, hears looking at you! Windows... let's not even go there. Mt Gox... really?

Or how about asking how many people would consciously and knowingly allow code to run on their PC (unobtrusively in the background, of course) that would disrupt or cause harm to their perceived enemies. Lots and lots, I bet.

LOIC, for the play-at-home version. And "lots and lots" would be a fairly accurate estimate.

I have created a programming language myself, with the aim of
A) having the same safety assurances as managed langiages (Java, C#, Perl etc)
B) being (nearly) as efficient as C++ in terms of memory and runtime
C) being as realtime-capable as C++ or Ada (no random GC runs)
D) having highly useful C++ concepts such as Destructors
E) having support for multithreaded computing in the type system
Here is it: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/
I am an individual developer and my marketing/propaganda means boil down to being able to write comments on sites like this. Of course I tried to drum up my language by pointing out all the advantages (see above). I tried to explain people why Java is unnecessarily inefficient, why C++ is a security risk.
What I got in response was only about two guys even using the compiler for a few minutes. Most replies to my arguments would be either ridiculing syntax, ridiculing the name or saying that their main language was already perfect. Pretty much the same in the real world, just less ridiculing. I got the impression that most programmers are either intellectually lazy and challenged to analyse new concepts or they are lazy in the sense that they do not want to learn any new language in addition to their main one. They go great lengths to defend Java/C++/PHP/C# or whatever their mainly used language is. That is to some degree rational, as learning a new language is a huge investment (time spent learning is an opportunity cost).
Still, I find it irrational to refuse even the consideration of making a change. I find it irrational to use some tool just because many other people use it and because a big corpo (MS, SUN) is pushing it. It has now become very clear that Java is far from ideal and all the supposed benefits are mainly theoretical. In reality, Java is insecure, bloated, kills user experience with random freezes (for GC) and the VMs on mobile phones are utter alpha-grade crap. Similar things could be said about C#, but it is hugely successful because of MS pushing it.
From a simpleton perspective (such as MBA-style reasoning), a popular language might be a rational choice, especially when you factor in employability, but from the perspective of creating excellent products and achieving best developer efficiency, they are not. Objective C was a fringe language until Apple sold their excellent quality product in the millions. Delphi/object Pascal is a fringe language because the maker cannot subsidize their IDE, but those who are in the know recognize it as efficient in terms of developer time and in terms of runtime. Delphi programs also don't freeze because of GC.
So the conclusion is - most programmers have the same mindset as the ladies in the vertical business - "whatever makes a quick buck is a good thing".

"For starters, all C++ sequence containers implement .at(), which is bounds-checked." Why is that the safe one and not operator[]() ??

The only thing specified by standard C++ regarding operator[] is its semantic (a[n] <=> *(a + n)); everything beyond that is unspecified. Two versions of operator[]() (one const, another mutable) are declared for all sequence containers except std::array, which is intended to work like a raw array when one is expected while supporting an interface that makes it compatible with other C++ containers for use in generic programming (these goals are accomplished by making the raw array inside std::array the first member of the class, thus validating all implicit conversions from std::array<T, N> to T[N]). Since the standard does not specify an implementation for operator[]() beyond the aforementioned semantics, implementations are free to do whatever they wish with the edge cases. On my system (Mac OS X 10.7.4), sequence containers are extended when an out-of-bounds access is performed on a mutable sequence container using operator[](), and I agree with this implementation, not only because it makes containers safe, but also because it does so without duplicating the functionality of at().

"both C11 and C++11 support threads." But the compiler still cannot tell whether you accidentally use some global data structures or not.

Doing so is not the compiler's job because objects can represent all kinds of resources. For example: I can have an object representing a TCP connection, which would be unreasonable to expect a compiler to understand, and that is precisely why object-oriented programming exists, so that objects can take care of themselves.

"Even C++ (which implements those concepts) is deemed unworthy" I also deem it unworthy, but for the reason that it is a portable assembler with very little compile and runtime checking as compared to other languages

And that's where you're wrong. C++ is one of the strongest languages when it comes to static analysis, not only because it is a statically typed language but also because it allows you to perform static generic programming, static reflection, and meta programming IN THE LANGUAGE ITSELF. Regarding the lack of safety, you have already been proven wrong: implementations can make standard containers as "safe" as they wish, the standard provides options that are guaranteed to be safe everywhere, and nothing is stopping you from either using the standard smart pointers or implementing your own.

"I try avoid anything written in Java as much as possible." I do so, too and my posts are not meant to promote Java. Rather, something like a hardened Ada with Destructors. Or something like I did myself: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/

The only differences between us is that I am comfortable with a flexible language whereas you have to restrict yourself in order to feel safe, as your arguments about C++ not being safe are completely unfounded.

Yeah RubyMine is pretty good and it supports a vim plugin to boot (although I haven't used the plugin enough to attest to its quality).

"For starters, all C++ sequence containers implement .at(), which is bounds-checked." Why is that the safe one and not operator[]() ??
"both C11 and C++11 support threads." But the compiler still cannot tell whether you accidentally use some global data structures or not.
"Even C++ (which implements those concepts) is deemed unworthy" I also deem it unworthy, but for the reason that it is a portable assembler with very little compile and runtime checking as compared to other languages
"I try avoid anything written in Java as much as possible." I do so, too and my posts are not meant to promote Java. Rather, something like a hardened Ada with Destructors. Or something like I did myself: https://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/

I think by proprietary he meant commercial. I suggested http://pigale.sourceforge.net/license_Qt.html

Well yes there are licenses like that, they are called non commercial licenses. For example: http://pigale.sourceforge.net/license_Qt.html

See my comments here: http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/looking-back-on-noemail-at-6-weeks/comment-page-1/#comment-441324

And here: http://ibiblio.org/pjones/blog/2008-ibm-predicts-five-future-trends-that-will-drive-unified-communications-read-more-ibm-predicts-5-future-trends-that-will-drive-unified-communications/comment-page-1/#comment-441613

And here: http://groups.google.com/group/diaspora-dev/browse_thread/thread/4cd369bdf16a346f

And here: http://groups.google.com/group/openmanufacturing/msg/576771df555e729f

And a related back-burner open source project by me (being passed by): http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/

And by others: http://www.semanticdesktop.org/
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Desktop
"The Internet, electronic mail, and the Web have revolutionized the way we communicate and collaborate - their mass adoption is one of the major technological success stories of the 20th century. We all are now much more connected, and in turn face new resulting problems: information overload caused by insufficient support for information organization and collaboration. For example, sending a single file to a mailing list multiplies the cognitive processing effort of filtering and organizing this file times the number of recipients - leading to more and more of peoples' time going into information filtering and information management activities. There is a need for smarter and more fine-grained computer support for personal and networked information that has to blend the boundaries between personal and group data, while simultaneously safeguarding privacy and establishing and deploying trust among collaborators. The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective access, providing standards means for formulating and distributing metadata and Ontologies. Still, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal computers. ..."

Windows 8 will be just as relevant to the business market as they ever were once you disable the terrible new UI, and that's all that matters anyway (whether businesses choose to skip Windows 8 in favor of waiting for the next iteration is another possibility, but unrelated to all the tablet nonsense).

Atleast in the consumer preview, there is no way to disable metro, there is no start menu to fallback to..

Until Microsoft gets their act together, I'd suggest this as a fix for the problem: http://sourceforge.net/projects/classicshell/files/

Or TinyCOBOL. Gentoo has both in portage.

See subject-line: It's QUITE SIMPLE in fact, & a year or two ago, I've shown the folks @ the UltraDefrag project JUST how it's done, & NOT for running @ "HIGH or REALTIME" priority, but more for LOW or BELOW NORMAL when the app's minimized

They were great about it too (I admire the program is why I even commented & hit their forums too, I give credit where I feel it's due as a fellow coder)...

So, they credited me for it here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

APK

P.S.=> Only "problem" I've seen & as to WHAT I suspect is a problem?

Multithreaded code on SINGLE CORE systems (actually slows down, not a lot of folks who are non-coders KNOW that), & also the drivers "pushing" for higher I/O privelege in "bursts" (read OR write) as to theorizing WHY Microsoft Security Essentials (a good program) is NOT obeying its own settings on a pal's laptop regarding CPU usage "flooring" his single core Celeron here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2872677&cid=40109735

apk

See subject-line: It's QUITE SIMPLE in fact, & a year or two ago, I've shown the folks @ the UltraDefrag project JUST how it's done, & NOT for running @ "HIGH or REALTIME" priority, but more for LOW or BELOW NORMAL when the app's minimized

They were great about it too (I admire the program is why I even commented & hit their forums too, I give credit where I feel it's due as a fellow coder)...

So, they credited me for it here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

APK

P.S.=> Only "problem" I've seen & as to WHAT I suspect is a problem?

Multithreaded code on SINGLE CORE systems (actually slows down, not a lot of folks who are non-coders KNOW that), & also the drivers "pushing" for higher I/O privelege in "bursts" (read OR write) as to theorizing WHY Microsoft Security Essentials (a good program) is NOT obeying its own settings on a pal's laptop regarding CPU usage "flooring" his single core Celeron here:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2872677&cid=40109735

apk

We use the command-line implementation http://sourceforge.net/projects/pwsafe integrated revision control. It has a 2-way merge feature, which makes it mostly usable with revision control, even though it's a little more tedious than necessary, since you have to manually accept or reject individual changes. For a while I've wanted to implement 3-way merge so that most merges can be automatic but I will probably never get around to doing so.

The downside of the CLI pwsafe is that it supports only v2 PasswordSafe databases which fortunately works with most other interfaces but lacks some features. The other downside (especially in comparison with a GPG-encrypted file) is the lack of an agent, which regrettably means that very often terminal access is done by 'pwsafe --exportdb | less'.

There is also at least one Android app that can read the database file format: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jefftharris.passwdsafe

This is the best solution that I've found.

"But you are Anonymous Coward just as much as I am, just as you signed your comment with APK, I did too, making you no less of an Anonymous Coward than I." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, @04:19AM (#40097701)

No you didn't, see here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2869437&cid=40093399 , and you're certainly NOT me either... So, you can quit lying already, ontop of being a TOTALLY ANONYMOUS "COWARD", also.

---

"This means that you're basically admit that Anonymous Coward describes your life, and that you've never seen any award go to yourself!" - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, @04:19AM (#40097701)

"Right" (sarcasm): The day you can show you've done MORE, EARLIER, & BETTER than I have in the computer sciences realm per this small & only PARTIAL list of my "favorites", is the day you can talk:

"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."

----

Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

----

What do I have to say about that much above?

I can't say it any better, than this was stated already (from the greatest book of all time, the "tech manual for life" imo):

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." - Corinthians Chapter 10, Verse

"But you are Anonymous Coward just as much as I am, just as you signed your comment with APK, I did too, making you no less of an Anonymous Coward than I." - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, @04:19AM (#40097701)

No you didn't, see here -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2869437&cid=40093399 , and you're certainly NOT me either... So, you can quit lying already, ontop of being a TOTALLY ANONYMOUS "COWARD", also.

---

"This means that you're basically admit that Anonymous Coward describes your life, and that you've never seen any award go to yourself!" - by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24, @04:19AM (#40097701)

"Right" (sarcasm): The day you can show you've done MORE, EARLIER, & BETTER than I have in the computer sciences realm per this small & only PARTIAL list of my "favorites", is the day you can talk:

"My Name is Ozymandias: King of Kings - Look upon my works, ye mighty, & DESPAIR..."

----

Windows NT Magazine (now Windows IT Pro) April 1997 "BACK OFFICE PERFORMANCE" issue, page 61

(&, for work done for EEC Systems/SuperSpeed.com on PAID CONTRACT (writing portions of their SuperCache program increasing its performance by up to 40% via my work) albeit, for their SuperDisk & HOW TO APPLY IT, took them to a finalist position @ MS Tech Ed, two years in a row 2000-2002, in its HARDEST CATEGORY: SQLServer Performance Enhancement).

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, 1997, "Top Freeware & Shareware of the Year" issue page 210, #1/first entry in fact (my work is there)

PC-WELT FEB 1998 - page 84, again, my work is featured there

WINDOWS MAGAZINE, WINTER 1998 - page 92, insert section, MUST HAVE WARES, my work is again, there

PC-WELT FEB 1999 - page 83, again, my work is featured there

CHIP Magazine 7/99 - page 100, my work is there

GERMAN PC BOOK, Data Becker publisher "PC Aufrusten und Repairen" 2000, where my work is contained in it

HOT SHAREWARE Numero 46 issue, pg. 54 (PC ware mag from Spain), 2001 my work is there, first one featured, yet again!

Also, a British PC Mag in 2002 for many utilities I wrote, saw it @ BORDERS BOOKS but didn't buy it... by that point, I had moved onto other areas in this field besides coding only...

Being paid for an article that made me money over @ PCPitstop in 2008 for writing up a guide that has people showing NO VIRUSES/SPYWARES & other screwups, via following its point, such as THRONKA sees here -> http://www.xtremepccentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=ee926d913b81bf6d63c3c7372fd2a24c&t=28430&page=3

It's also been myself helping out the folks at the UltraDefrag64 project (a 64-bit defragger for Windows), in showing them code for how to do Process Priority Control @ the GUI usermode/ring 3/rpl 3 level in their program (good one too), & being credited for it by their lead dev & his team... see here -> http://ultradefrag.sourceforge.net/handbook/Credits.html or here http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=2993462&group_id=199532&atid=969873

----

What do I have to say about that much above?

I can't say it any better, than this was stated already (from the greatest book of all time, the "tech manual for life" imo):

"But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me." - Corinthians Chapter 10, Verse

Through pandas, for a start. The SciPy/NumPy stack is quite nifty, I'm especially interested in how to apply it for working with irregular time series data.

Not to say anybody should ditch R, I still support our researchers most weeks at work in using it. But it's not as clear-cut as you seem to think it is, especially in terms of memory efficiency.

I am happy with Zarafa Web client on my Mac. The interface has been literally copy-pasted from Outlook, so you will not lose yourself in a new environment. I could also access my e-mail using IMAP or any other standard protocol. Free (community) version comes with 3 licenses for MAPI (real Microsoft Outlook) connections (Windows). Pay version is still cheaper than Microsoft Exchange and allows for up to unlimited Microsoft Outlook connections.

I use Z-Push on my iPod Touch (Microsoft ActiveSync-like technology) and it works like a charm. Overall, good documentation and possible integration with other systems. Available on Ubuntu's package management system - easy to install on some other linux distros.

well, you have
http://cedet.sourceforge.net/
and the
http://ecb.sourceforge.net/ .
i dont think that there is much/if anything missing if you configure cedet correctly.

well, you have
http://cedet.sourceforge.net/
and the
http://ecb.sourceforge.net/ .
i dont think that there is much/if anything missing if you configure cedet correctly.

I've been using CScope in Emacs for about a year (in fact, I added the entry to ascope.el on that wiki page you linked to), and I've recently switched to Semantic from CEDET and GNU Global.

Sadly, the Emacs Code Browser (ECB) linked to from the CEDET page seems to be broken for recent versions of Emacs and CEDET and unmaintained.

While I dislike Eclipse for bloat and difficult extensibility, I have yet to decide whether Emacs has caught up with it for code browsing.

To know what has and hasn't changed, he can't access the backup at home, like rsync would need to do.

If I understand correctly BackupPC caches the checksums rsync generates to enable exactly that. It would be nice if that was possible with vanilla rsync.

For what it's worth, with my family I combine educaiton with tracking so that I can best help my children understand what they are doing. They are young and have a tendency of making bad choices (like most of us). So, I use PyKeyLogger from Sourceforge on my machines .

My children know that if they make a mistake they just have to be honest about it and let me know and there's no problem. If they try to do something they know they aren't allowed to do and I see it in the logs then they lose privileges for awhile. This way I can help them learn and give them the freedom to make some of those mistakes and then explain why it's bad to try to purchase products with fake credit card numbers online (no, seriously, one tried). It's fairly simple to install on any system and it can be as obtrusive or unobtrusive as you want. Obviously, this will only work with PCs (Windows and Linux). As for the iPhones, you're out of luck. My children don't have cell phones and if I need to spy on my wife it's probably divorce time. My daughter has an iPod Touch and there are parental controls to lock it down to disallow messaging, texting, installing apps, etc without a password. I install apps that are acceptable at her request.

Like everyone else has said, this really should be done in an open and honest forum. If it's his children, he can tell them and they have no say. If the concern is his wife he's on VERY shaky legal grounds if he does any of this without informing her. This setup is designed to catch mistakes and be used for training children, not to outright control and not to surreptitiously spy.

If you can set up your gateway to export Netflow data, you get excellent data for tracking your traffic (connection metadata) without all the bulk of keeping a full copy of the traffic.

There's a large number of tools available for collecting, analyzing and otherwise dissecting collected Netflow data, with a good number most likely available via your favorite free Unix-like operating system's packages collection. My favorite combo is to set up an OpenBSD box as the gateway, have it export traffic data via the pflow(4) facility and do the collection and analysis bits somewhere via nfdump/nfsen (see eg nfsen.sourceforge.net for info).

There are various resources available within direct reach of web search, but I would also recommend taking a look at Michael W. Lucas' book Network Flow Analysis for a nice treatment of Netflow in general (it uses flow-tools, but most of what he writes will be useful in the context of other tools too).

If you want to "copy" junk with its metajunk from an ext3 filesystem on to a FAT32 filesystem, remember that you can always create an 8GB file with dd from /dev/zero, run mkfs.ext3 against that file, and then mount that file as an ext3 filesystem thanks to the loopback adapter. You won't be able to read that junk from a Windows machine, but you probably won't care, and if you create an 8GB file on a 16GB FAT32 flash disk, you'll still have 8GB of space available for use in Windows -- and Windows will be able to copy the 8GB filesystem file and stuff.

Someone else's explanation: http://nst.sourceforge.net/nst/docs/user/ch04s04.html

Don't believe you, please provide details ;). You always think you go em all but it's always hard to tell without comparing to other attempts and of course adding in some bits like http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/.

2) In cases where we need/want 8 get a UI mod to make 8 look like 7. Someone will have what we need, probably Stardock. They already have a start button restorer (http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/) and given that UI customization is their big market

Start8 is better than nothing, but it brings up a minimized Metro-ish screen taking up a quarter of your desktop. IMO, Classic Shell is a much better solution and actually restores a real start menu: http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

I need an example, because as I said, pedants talk all the time about how SQL doesn't truely follow the relational model of Date and Codd, but never provide a working alternative that does. I said nothing about syntax at all. I make no claim that SQL syntax is great or better than any other. I said I want to see a workable database that follows the *model* correctly/completely. I've only looked at their site for a few minutes, but I seen nothing that indicates they follow the model any better. Only that they like their syntax better, and is object oriented. Neither have any bearing on following Date /Codd's model.

Date himself gave the description of a language that follows the model, so if you want to see an example, that's it. Here is a simple implementation of it.

I had already explained the reasons why there are no production-quality, mature implementations - this has everything to do with ROI; SQL is simply not bad enough to bother.

As for Suneido, judging by your mention of "object oriented", you've only looked at their application language, which doesn't have anything to do with relational model. What I was rather referring to is the query language for their integrated database; it's not object oriented in any way - it's pure relational algebra.

NPM looks interesting, personally, I implemented Password Safe: http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/ unfortunately, it does not handle multiple users, though I suppose you could have multiple files with different passwords and a master file with all the passwords.

We use Keepass on a CIFS share. It locks the password file when multiple people have it open so you don't have write problems.

You can also put the file up on a LAMP style website with Web-Keepass.

Out of all of the stuff I've tried for team password management, my favorite is Password Safe. I haven't tried the Linux port but apparently there are a couple: http://passwordsafe.sourceforge.net/relatedprojects.shtml The ONLY reason it beats a GPG encrypted password file is ease of use. Ideally you are hiring people who can deal with GPG but my experience is that it can be a decent learning curve just to get people to not use notepad.

GreatBunzinni [slashdot.org], real name Rui Maciel, has been using anonymous posts [slashdot.org] and sockpuppets to accuse nearly 20 people of being employed by a PR firm to astroturf Slashdot, without any evidence. Using his sockpuppets, he mods up these anonymous posts while modding down the accused in order to filter their viewpoints. GreatBunzinni accidentally outed himself [slashdot.org] as the anonymous troll who has been posting these accusations to every Slashdot story. For example, he wrote the same post almost verbatim, first using his logged-in account [slashdot.org] followed by an anonymous post [slashdot.org] days later. Note the use of the same script and wording.

It turns out GreatBunzinni is actually a 31-year-old C++/Java programmer from Almada, Portugal named Rui Maciel, with a civil engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico and a hobby working with electronics. He runs Kubuntu and is active on the KDE mailing list. Rui Maciel has accounts at OSNews, Launchpad, ProgrammersHeaven, the Ubuntu forums, and of course Slashdot.

Most of the users who Rui targets have done nothing else but criticize Google for something or praise a competitor. Many of them are subscribers who get the first post because subscribers see stories earlier than non-subscribers. After one of Rui's accusations gets posted, the original post receives a surge of "Troll" and "Overrated" moderations from his sockpuppets, while Rui's posts get modded up. Often, additional anonymous posters will appear to give support and receive upmods. At the same time, accused users who defend themselves are modded "Offtopic."

Rui Maciel's contact information
Email: greatbunzinni@gmail.com [mailto], greatbunzinni@engineer.com [mailto], or rui.maciel@gmail.com [mailto]
IM: greatbunzinni@jabber.org [jabber] (the same Jabber account currently listed on his Slashdot account)
Blog: http://rui_maciel.users.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]
Programming projects: http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/GreatBunzinni/contributions [programmersheaven.com]

The following accounts have been confirmed to be Rui Maciel, in order of activity. You'll notice that they all share a posting style and often reply to each other:

HarrySquatter [slashdot.org]
Galestar [slashdot.org]
GameboyRMH [slashdot.org]
ZeroSumHappiness [slashdot.org]
Jeng [slashdot.org]
Nerdfest [slashdot.org]
TheNarrator [slashdot.org]
flurp [slashdot.org]
anonymov [slashdot.org]
chrb [slashdot.org]
zidium [slashdot.org]
NicknameOne [slashdot.org]
Nicknamename [slashdot.org]
forkfail [slashdot.org]
icebike [slashdot.org]
ilguido [slashdot.org]
psiclops [slashdot.org]
Toonol [slashdot.org]
russotto [slashdot.org]
rreyelts [slashdot.org]
symbolset [slashdot.org]

tl;dr: An Ubuntu fan named Rui Maciel is waging an organized trolling campaign using multiple sockpuppet accounts to filter Slashdot posts.

-bonch

GreatBunzinni, real name Rui Maciel, has been using anonymous posts and sockpuppets to accuse nearly 20 people of being employed by a PR firm to astroturf Slashdot, without any evidence. Using his sockpuppets, he mods up these anonymous posts while modding down the accused in order to filter their viewpoints. GreatBunzinni accidentally outed himself as the anonymous troll who has been posting these accusations. For example, he wrote the same post almost verbatim, first using his logged-in account followed by an anonymous post days later. Note the use of the same script and wording.

It turns out GreatBunzinni is a 31-year-old C++/Java programmer from Almada, Portugal named Rui Maciel, with a civil engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico and a hobby working with electronics. He runs Kubuntu and is active on the KDE mailing list. Rui Maciel has accounts at OSNews, Launchpad, ProgrammersHeaven, the Ubuntu forums, and of course Slashdot.

Most of the users who Rui targets have done nothing else but criticize Google for something or praise a competitor. Many of them are subscribers who get the first post because subscribers see stories earlier than non-subscribers. After one of Rui's accusations gets posted, the original post receives a surge of "Troll" and "Overrated" moderations from his sockpuppets, while Rui's posts get modded up. Often, additional anonymous posters will appear to give support and receive upmods. At the same time, accused users who defend themselves are modded "Offtopic."

Rui Maciel's contact information
Email: greatbunzinni@gmail.com, greatbunzinni@engineer.com, or rui.maciel@gmail.com
IM: greatbunzinni@jabber.org (the same Jabber account currently listed on his Slashdot account)
Blog: http://rui_maciel.users.sourceforge.net/
Programming projects: http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/GreatBunzinni/contributions

The following accounts have been confirmed to be Rui Maciel, in order of activity. You'll notice that they all share a posting style and often reply to each other:

HarrySquatter
Galestar
GameboyRMH
ZeroSumHappiness
Jeng
scot4875
Nerdfest
TheNarrator
flurp
anonymov
chrb
zidium
NicknameOne
Nicknamename
forkfail
icebike
ilguido
psiclops
Toonol
russotto
rreyelts
symbolset

tl;dr: An Ubuntu fan named Rui Macie

GreatBunzinni, real name Rui Maciel, has been using anonymous posts and sockpuppets to accuse nearly 20 people of being employed by a PR firm to astroturf Slashdot, without any evidence. Using his sockpuppets, he mods up these anonymous posts while modding down the accused in order to filter their viewpoints. GreatBunzinni accidentally outed himself as the anonymous troll who has been posting these accusations to every Slashdot story. For example, he wrote the same post almost verbatim, first using his logged-in account followed by an anonymous post days later. Note the use of the same script and wording.

It turns out GreatBunzinni is actually a 31-year-old C++/Java programmer from Almada, Portugal named Rui Maciel, with a civil engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico and a hobby working with electronics. He runs Kubuntu and is active on the KDE mailing list. Rui Maciel has accounts at OSNews, Launchpad, ProgrammersHeaven, the Ubuntu forums, and of course Slashdot.

Most of the users who Rui targets have done nothing else but criticize Google for something or praise a competitor. Many of them are subscribers who get the first post because subscribers see stories earlier than non-subscribers. After one of Rui's accusations gets posted, the original post receives a surge of "Troll" and "Overrated" moderations from his sockpuppets, while Rui's posts get modded up. Often, additional anonymous posters will appear to give support and receive upmods. At the same time, accused users who defend themselves are modded "Offtopic."

Rui Maciel's contact information
Email: greatbunzinni@gmail.com, greatbunzinni@engineer.com, or rui.maciel@gmail.com
IM: greatbunzinni@jabber.org (the same Jabber account currently listed on his Slashdot account)
Blog: http://rui_maciel.users.sourceforge.net/
Programming projects: http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/GreatBunzinni/contributions

The following accounts have been confirmed to be Rui Maciel, in order of activity. You'll notice that they all share a posting style and often reply to each other:

HarrySquatter
Galestar
GameboyRMH
ZeroSumHappiness
Jeng
Nerdfest
TheNarrator
flurp
anonymov
chrb
zidium
NicknameOne
Nicknamename
forkfail
icebike
ilguido
psiclops
Toonol
russotto
rreyelts
symbolset

tl;dr: An Ubuntu fan named Rui Maciel is waging an organ

GreatBunzinni, real name Rui Maciel, has been using anonymous posts to accuse almost 20 accounts of being employed by a PR firm to astroturf Slashdot, without any evidence. Using multiple puppet accounts, he mods up these anonymous posts while modding down the target accounts in order to censor their viewpoints off of Slashdot. GreatBunzinni accidentally outed himself as the anonymous troll who has been posting these accusations to every Slashdot story. For example, he wrote the same post almost verbatim, first using his logged-in account followed by an anonymous post days later. Note the use of the same script and wording.

It turns out GreatBunzinni is actually a 31-year-old C++/Java programmer from Almada, Portugal named Rui Maciel, with a civil engineering degree from Instituto Superior Técnico and a hobby working with electronics. He runs Kubuntu and is active on the KDE mailing list. Rui Maciel has accounts at OSNews, Launchpad, ProgrammersHeaven, the Ubuntu forums, and of course Slashdot.

Most of the users who Rui targets have done nothing more than commit the sin of praising a competitor to Google at some point in the past. Many of them are subscribers who often get the first post, since subscribers see stories earlier than non-subscribers. After one of Rui's accusations is posted as a reply, the original post receives a surge of "Troll" and "Overrated" moderations from his puppet accounts, while the accusatory post gets modded up. Often, additional anonymous posters suddenly pop up to give support, which also receive upmods. At the same time, accused users who defend themselves are modded down as "Offtopic."

Rui Maciel's contact information
Email: greatbunzinni@gmail.com, greatbunzinni@engineer.com, or rui.maciel@gmail.com
IM: greatbunzinni@jabber.org (the same Jabber account currently listed on his Slashdot account)
Blog: http://rui_maciel.users.sourceforge.net/
Programming projects: http://www.programmersheaven.com/user/GreatBunzinni/contributions

Known puppet accounts used by Rui Maciel
Galestar
NicknameOne
Nicknamename
Nerdfest
TheNarrator
Toonol
anonymov
chrb
flurp
forkfail
icebike
ilguido
psiclops
rreyelts
russotto
symbolset
zidium

tl;dr: An Ubuntu fan named Rui Maciel is actively trolling Slashdot with multiple moderator accounts to filter dissenting opinions off the site.

Sure, you can get a USB to RS232 converter. How many non-geeks have one?

Probably few, but they're easy to find online or in stores. Start by searching for usb rs232 adapter on Google Product Search. I used to work at a warehouse that used Windows Mobile PDAs with a built-in laser barcode scanner to run an internal warehouse automation app. Initial loading of the early versions of the app happened over an RS232 connection to the scanner's dock. Is your worry that non-geeks won't know what to tell the salesperson even if an online guide refers to a "USB to RS232 adapter with a DE9 plug" and has a picture of the plugs to expect, like this PC to TV hookup guide?

Would the drivers for your RS-232 drive (probably made for DOS or Amiga or Apple II) still be available and work on today's hardware/software?

People are still making drivers to access the SOS file system used by Apple II ProDOS. So as long as adapters for the physical layer remain available (e.g. USB to RS232 converters), and the wire protocol is documented, some Linux geek is likely to have written a tool that makes mounting such a drive as easy as mounting any other storage.