Maybe it's wishful thinking but, if the ISPs are unwilling to upgrade rural areas they already serve to 10Mbit/s, perhaps they would be inclined to sell that infrastructure to local companies/municipalities instead. The logic being that they can then claim closer to 100% of their customers are receiving the FCC definition of broadband. Or maybe they don't care about that particular statistic. I dunno.
I live in a rural area and write software from home on a 5Mbit/s ADSL line and it's not terrible but, having talked with the technicians that have been out, I know that there is fiber running within two miles of my house (admittedly two miles up a mountain). The ISP will never, ever build that out. However, the community I live in has all the heavy machinery (owned by the community, not county/city/state) to maintain the roads and things like that. If the ISP would sell the infrastructure to the community (or a company founded by the community), I have little doubt that we'd have fiber running under all the roads within a summer with a moderate cost to run it to your home from there.
pfSense works well but Untangle is also worth mentioning (http://www.untangle.com/). It has all sorts of pluggable modules like VPN client/server, ad blocking, intrusion detection, etc. I've been using it for a few years on modest hardware (Intel Atom with 4G of RAM and a 1TB green disk) and it's always worked flawlessly.
Supermicro is an excellent choice for high end. You pay a premium but it's one of the few companies that fills the niche between gaming motherboards and enterprise grade motherboards. They make both high end workstation motherboards and server motherboards and, because of the target audience, I would imagine that Linux support is a high priority. I've actually got an entire rack of Supermicro gear (chassis, motherboards, heat sinks, etc.) in my house and after several years of flawless running with Linux, I wouldn't even consider another vendor for high end home use.
You aren't the only one that thinks that: http://www.coindesk.com/need-a.... A lot of the altcoins are definitely scams but, there is actually some legitimate work going on that is pretty interesting. Whether or not cryptocurrency ends up becoming mainstream or not is still unclear but, from a computer science standpoint, I think it's all pretty interesting. Maybe it's a fad that will go down in flames or maybe it will stabilize into something that benefits society. Either way, I've never understood all the/. hate for cryptocurrencies. It's a very nerdy and interesting modern development that no one has been forced to become involved with.
I've actually worked on several projects where we ended up creating a new visual programming language to solve the problem. We did it because it was almost impossible to express the problems in a traditional programming language. Visual programming is awkward when the problem doesn't lend itself to visual programming. If you wanted to argue that most problems don't lend themselves to visual programming, you'd get no argument here. But, if the problem calls for it, definitely don't be afraid to design a UI to describe it just because, traditionally, you've seen it not work.
Maybe it didn't work in the past because there wasn't a vacuum to fill. People who have read Slashdot for 10+ years have come to rely on having a site like this. With the imminent death of the site, you aren't trying to convert a community, you'd be giving them a place to go.
Just registered bangslashdot.com/net/org (!/.) in case Slashdot needs to be forked to a new site. Will happily sell the domain to a more capable web-type for the exact price I paid (with the stipulation that I get a low UID).
I'm still waiting for an "Ask Slashdot: Once Slashdot beta has been foisted on me, what site should I use instead". I'm only partially joking. I actually want to know the answer.
I loathe to say this but, HTTPS Everywhere is security theater. It makes your browser have a green icon where it otherwise might not but, that green icon is just an illusion of security. Considering recent revelations about the NSA, I would assume all SSL certificates are compromised. Like, literally, all of them. If the trust chain has been compromised by one party (the NSA), I would assume it compromised by all parties.
I will admit that I was skeptical that a piece of software could cure my cancer, bring back my wife and prevent me from beating my daughter but, based on dozens of posts on Slashdot, I'm willing to give it a try.
Some of the big companies that are going to be essentially extorted money can actually prevent this from happening. If Google/Facebook/etc tell AT&T, "That's fine, we'll pay your extortion money. However, since we add so much value to your service, we've decided to no longer provide our services on your network unless you pay us slightly more than we are paying you". If major services started disappear off the AT&T network, I imagine they'd rethink this blatant violation of net-neutrality. I doubt the big internet companies would ever do something like this but, a guy can dream.
I'd take it a step further and say the real story is that people are idiots. On a scale between Dangerously Oblivious and Zombie Apocalypse Prepper, most people heavily lean towards the former. Whether that's dressing for the conditions, driving for the conditions, keeping some basic emergency supplies in your car, having enough food in the house, having an emergency alternative heat source, etc. I'm not saying everyone needs a Unimog and a hardened bunker with a years worth of MREs in their backyard but, a little common sense and a little preparation can make most extreme winter weather nearly a non-event.
Well said and makes me think of this quote from Fear and Loathing:
"We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
You joke but, earlier today there was a story about Starship Troopers on Slashdot. I know that if I still lived in Buenos Aires, I'd give serious thought to getting out of town for a while...
The fossil fuel power plants themselves are less of a danger but, the methods used to extract the fuel can and do render huge swaths of land uninhabitable. There are parts of the U.S. where previously habitable (and populated) land has become uninhabitable (or nearly so) due to the groundwater and air pollution effects of hydraulic fracturing.
When I was younger and didn't have a personal machine, when I got home from work I'd boot my employer laptop with an Ubuntu Live CD and all was well. They certainly weren't savvy enough to have put some sort of monitoring below the OS level and so my por^H^H^H browsing habits were safe and the machine was in no danger of being compromised at the OS level.
You have multiple users logged into your laptop while on battery? Sure, it's possible but, I find it highly unlikely that most people do.
Is the printer still there? Let's check again. Is the internet still connected? Let's check again.
See above.
Event logging. Windows knows what it's doing, because it takes the time to write it down.
That's the only potentially valid thing you've said so far. Well, the first sentence at least.
The windows registry. It's probably the single most reliable aspect of any operating system. It's incredibly fast, always-on, used tens of thousands of times in a single moment by a any application -- my graphics suite writes 12'000 registry entries when I close the application. And you never need to worry about it getting corrupted.
At this point I'm wondering if this is actually a troll.
No fewer than eight different scripting languages available at any moment.
I don't see how this could affect battery life at all.
Twenty versions of a single DLL loaded concurrently, for cross-decade application compatibility.
Except for the disk access to read the DLLs, just having them in memory makes no difference at all.
It may not be that old but, it's definitely of nostalgic value for a lot of people. 12 cores isn't mindblowing these days but, in 2001, cramming 12 processors (not 12 cores) into a single rack mountable computer was a very impressive feat. I worked at Sun in the late 90s and I'd love to own some brand new gear from that era because, in those days, Sun was doing really impressive things with hardware in an exciting time. It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.
It's pretty simple what you can do about it: Don't buy subsidized phones. Not only do you end up paying more for a subsidized phone, you lose your rights to do whatever you want with it.
I really don't understand why people are so up in arms about this. I'm a card carrying member of the EFF and ACLU and, apart from the fact that this is a criminal offense instead of a civil issue, I'm not really that concerned because the "loophole" is so simple: Buy your fucking phone instead of renting it.
One of the problems I frequently notice with Python is that since whitespace has syntactic meaning, it seems like many Python programmers ONLY use whitespace for syntactic purposes. The language itself isn't too bad but, I can't count the number of times I've opened up a.py file and been greeted by a gigantic wall of nearly incomprehensible code. Now, sure, you can do that in most languages but, it seems especially prevalent in Python.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it's wishful thinking but, if the ISPs are unwilling to upgrade rural areas they already serve to 10Mbit/s, perhaps they would be inclined to sell that infrastructure to local companies/municipalities instead. The logic being that they can then claim closer to 100% of their customers are receiving the FCC definition of broadband. Or maybe they don't care about that particular statistic. I dunno.
I live in a rural area and write software from home on a 5Mbit/s ADSL line and it's not terrible but, having talked with the technicians that have been out, I know that there is fiber running within two miles of my house (admittedly two miles up a mountain). The ISP will never, ever build that out. However, the community I live in has all the heavy machinery (owned by the community, not county/city/state) to maintain the roads and things like that. If the ISP would sell the infrastructure to the community (or a company founded by the community), I have little doubt that we'd have fiber running under all the roads within a summer with a moderate cost to run it to your home from there.
pfSense works well but Untangle is also worth mentioning (http://www.untangle.com/). It has all sorts of pluggable modules like VPN client/server, ad blocking, intrusion detection, etc. I've been using it for a few years on modest hardware (Intel Atom with 4G of RAM and a 1TB green disk) and it's always worked flawlessly.
Supermicro is an excellent choice for high end. You pay a premium but it's one of the few companies that fills the niche between gaming motherboards and enterprise grade motherboards. They make both high end workstation motherboards and server motherboards and, because of the target audience, I would imagine that Linux support is a high priority. I've actually got an entire rack of Supermicro gear (chassis, motherboards, heat sinks, etc.) in my house and after several years of flawless running with Linux, I wouldn't even consider another vendor for high end home use.
You aren't the only one that thinks that: http://www.coindesk.com/need-a.... A lot of the altcoins are definitely scams but, there is actually some legitimate work going on that is pretty interesting. Whether or not cryptocurrency ends up becoming mainstream or not is still unclear but, from a computer science standpoint, I think it's all pretty interesting. Maybe it's a fad that will go down in flames or maybe it will stabilize into something that benefits society. Either way, I've never understood all the /. hate for cryptocurrencies. It's a very nerdy and interesting modern development that no one has been forced to become involved with.
I've actually worked on several projects where we ended up creating a new visual programming language to solve the problem. We did it because it was almost impossible to express the problems in a traditional programming language. Visual programming is awkward when the problem doesn't lend itself to visual programming. If you wanted to argue that most problems don't lend themselves to visual programming, you'd get no argument here. But, if the problem calls for it, definitely don't be afraid to design a UI to describe it just because, traditionally, you've seen it not work.
Maybe it didn't work in the past because there wasn't a vacuum to fill. People who have read Slashdot for 10+ years have come to rely on having a site like this. With the imminent death of the site, you aren't trying to convert a community, you'd be giving them a place to go.
What is there to view without the active contributors? You can get days old news practically anywhere.
Just registered bangslashdot.com/net/org (!/.) in case Slashdot needs to be forked to a new site. Will happily sell the domain to a more capable web-type for the exact price I paid (with the stipulation that I get a low UID).
I'm still waiting for an "Ask Slashdot: Once Slashdot beta has been foisted on me, what site should I use instead". I'm only partially joking. I actually want to know the answer.
I loathe to say this but, HTTPS Everywhere is security theater. It makes your browser have a green icon where it otherwise might not but, that green icon is just an illusion of security. Considering recent revelations about the NSA, I would assume all SSL certificates are compromised. Like, literally, all of them. If the trust chain has been compromised by one party (the NSA), I would assume it compromised by all parties.
Well, nowhere in the glowing reviews did I see that it would also bring back my dog so, country music still has its place.
I will admit that I was skeptical that a piece of software could cure my cancer, bring back my wife and prevent me from beating my daughter but, based on dozens of posts on Slashdot, I'm willing to give it a try.
Some of the big companies that are going to be essentially extorted money can actually prevent this from happening. If Google/Facebook/etc tell AT&T, "That's fine, we'll pay your extortion money. However, since we add so much value to your service, we've decided to no longer provide our services on your network unless you pay us slightly more than we are paying you". If major services started disappear off the AT&T network, I imagine they'd rethink this blatant violation of net-neutrality. I doubt the big internet companies would ever do something like this but, a guy can dream.
I'd take it a step further and say the real story is that people are idiots. On a scale between Dangerously Oblivious and Zombie Apocalypse Prepper, most people heavily lean towards the former. Whether that's dressing for the conditions, driving for the conditions, keeping some basic emergency supplies in your car, having enough food in the house, having an emergency alternative heat source, etc. I'm not saying everyone needs a Unimog and a hardened bunker with a years worth of MREs in their backyard but, a little common sense and a little preparation can make most extreme winter weather nearly a non-event.
The NSA *is* a criminal gang. And, it's a criminal gang that can put you in jail for breaking laws that you don't even realize you are breaking.
Or, that the very least, you should at least tell the tale of the time that a Møøse bit your sister.
Well said and makes me think of this quote from Fear and Loathing:
"We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
You joke but, earlier today there was a story about Starship Troopers on Slashdot. I know that if I still lived in Buenos Aires, I'd give serious thought to getting out of town for a while...
The fossil fuel power plants themselves are less of a danger but, the methods used to extract the fuel can and do render huge swaths of land uninhabitable. There are parts of the U.S. where previously habitable (and populated) land has become uninhabitable (or nearly so) due to the groundwater and air pollution effects of hydraulic fracturing.
When I was younger and didn't have a personal machine, when I got home from work I'd boot my employer laptop with an Ubuntu Live CD and all was well. They certainly weren't savvy enough to have put some sort of monitoring below the OS level and so my por^H^H^H browsing habits were safe and the machine was in no danger of being compromised at the OS level.
Defragging a potentially huge disk, in the background, on-the-fly, so the disk never slows down.
Why on earth would it do this while on battery? Can't it wait until the machine is plugged in again?
File search index, in the background, on-the-fly, so you can search faster. You can turn this off.
Again, why do this by default when on battery?
Full window dragging, and many other graphics enhancements. You can turn these off.
This will have almost no impact on battery life unless you are spending most of your time dragging around windows for your own amusement.
Is the printer still there? Let's check again.
Why? If I'm not trying to print anything, who cares if the printer is there.
Port polling, did you know that a USB port might gett polled 50'000 times per second? You can turn this down. A lot.
Why default to such an aggressive polls/second while on battery?
Scheduled tasks. Oh so many scheduled tasks. You probably have over 1'000 defined.
I certainly didn't schedule over 1000 tasks. Why are there over 1000 tasks scheduled and why are they scheduled to run while on battery?
Is the internet still connected? Let's check again.
Why? I'll know as soon as a webpage can't load.
An actual software Firewall. You can turn it off, or make it much simpler.
If this has any effect on battery life then it is horribly, horribly written.
Multi-user, multi-profile. Everything gets doubled.
You have multiple users logged into your laptop while on battery? Sure, it's possible but, I find it highly unlikely that most people do.
Is the printer still there? Let's check again.
Is the internet still connected? Let's check again.
See above.
Event logging. Windows knows what it's doing, because it takes the time to write it down.
That's the only potentially valid thing you've said so far. Well, the first sentence at least.
The windows registry. It's probably the single most reliable aspect of any operating system. It's incredibly fast, always-on, used tens of thousands of times in a single moment by a any application -- my graphics suite writes 12'000 registry entries when I close the application. And you never need to worry about it getting corrupted.
At this point I'm wondering if this is actually a troll.
No fewer than eight different scripting languages available at any moment.
I don't see how this could affect battery life at all.
Twenty versions of a single DLL loaded concurrently, for cross-decade application compatibility.
Except for the disk access to read the DLLs, just having them in memory makes no difference at all.
You can find a good rundown of privacy and payment options for a lot of popular VPN services here: http://torrentfreak.com/vpn-services-that-take-your-anonymity-seriously-2013-edition-130302/
Basically, if you so choose, you can use a VPN service very anonymously.
It may not be that old but, it's definitely of nostalgic value for a lot of people. 12 cores isn't mindblowing these days but, in 2001, cramming 12 processors (not 12 cores) into a single rack mountable computer was a very impressive feat. I worked at Sun in the late 90s and I'd love to own some brand new gear from that era because, in those days, Sun was doing really impressive things with hardware in an exciting time. It's like wanting to own a muscle car. It's probably not that fast, it handles like garbage, it uses too much gas, etc. But, damn, it's cool.
It's pretty simple what you can do about it: Don't buy subsidized phones. Not only do you end up paying more for a subsidized phone, you lose your rights to do whatever you want with it.
I really don't understand why people are so up in arms about this. I'm a card carrying member of the EFF and ACLU and, apart from the fact that this is a criminal offense instead of a civil issue, I'm not really that concerned because the "loophole" is so simple: Buy your fucking phone instead of renting it.
One of the problems I frequently notice with Python is that since whitespace has syntactic meaning, it seems like many Python programmers ONLY use whitespace for syntactic purposes. The language itself isn't too bad but, I can't count the number of times I've opened up a .py file and been greeted by a gigantic wall of nearly incomprehensible code. Now, sure, you can do that in most languages but, it seems especially prevalent in Python.