If that is all true, then Mr. Hotz should not only be able to successfully fight these charges, but he can (and should) go after the police officers individually under "false arrest under color of law" statutes.
I guess I'm the stupid one here, but I don't understand the basic premise. Can someone please explain exactly what this "boundary layer" of motionless air is on a regular heatsink/fan? Why/how does it form and exactly how big of a problem is it really? I am just not understanding how there can be any motionless air unless there are some eddies formed by the fins or some such. Help! Thanks.
Uh-oh, this is going to be a big problem for the United States since our entire fiscal policy is to deficit spend and avoid really solving any problems until the planet explodes in 2012. It is going to be mighty embarrassing when the debt collectors come a knockin' in 2013. "There's nobody home, go away!"
To answer the question of whether or not she should be allowed to compete as a female if she is not 100% female, one must first consider the question of whether women should be competing in a separate class at all.
Let's avoid the underlying moral and philosophical issues and just stick with the practical reason for setting things up so women compete separately: approximately 50% of the population is female, so it is a political necessity. You can argue all sorts of other reasons, but when it really comes down to it, that is the crux of it.
And if you really think about it, we don't actually have women competing against women in one group and men competing against men in another group. What we REALLY have is women competing against women in one group, and EVERYONE ELSE competing in another group. Men are not set up as a protected class, it is only women who are set up as a protected class. If a sufficiently gifted female runner wanted to compete against men, I very much suspect that she'd be allowed to do so.
Once you realize the reality that female sports are basically a protected class based on a political reality, the answer to the other question becomes pretty simple: anyone who is not 100% female is not part of the "protected class" and should therefore compete in the "everyone else" category.
Is it fair? Maybe not. But how is having women compete separately "fair" in the first place? It is just for political expediency, and personally I don't see anything wrong with it if it keeps 50% of the population happier and more fulfilled than they otherwise would be without causing any undue hardship on a significant part of the population.
Convoluted or obfuscated code is no benefit to anyone and deserves scorn.
However, there is nothing about being a brilliant programmer that requires one to write convoluted or obfuscated code.
The best code needs very little documentation because it is immediately obvious to any other programmer what the code is doing, and long comments are only required in sections of the code where the purpose of the code is not immediately obvious.
It does require a dose of humility to intentionally add minor inefficiencies to a program to make it more clear, though, and it sounds like the Josh in this story was sorely lacking such humility.
Using five lines of code to show the intermediate assignments in a long calculation instead of doing it all in one line of code can make the logic flow easier to follow by orders of magnitude, but some programmers are unwilling to deface the elegance of their design with such simplicities.
Ultimately the true genius is the person who can write brilliant code that is also easy to read and modify.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution, but what if he chooses not to?
As you point out, the worst that happens is the court eventually overrules, but often the damage has already been done and the President can just try again in a slightly modified way.
Is such disregard for the Constitution treason?
At the very least it is an impeachable offense, but only if congress has the will to impeach.
My idea never seems to get traction, but I still think its a good one and will repeat it once again:
If you INTEND to make your wifi open access, then you should signify this by including the key word "[PUBLIC]" or [PUB]" at the start (e.g. "[PUBLIC] Joe's Wifi" or "[PUB] Megaboob, Inc").
That makes the intent crystal clear (some other key words could also be included to provide flexibility).
I agree that any open wifi spot ought to be assumed to be public in the first place, but since the law seems to disagree, I believe my idea is the next best alternative. Software that searches for hotspots could be updated to look for these key words to indicate if the hotspots are intended to be public or not.
Long term, it would be nice if the wifi standard were updated so that a bit could be toggled which would indicate whether the hotspot is intended to be public or not. In the configuration menu it could be right next to the "Make SSID Visible" checkbox.
On one hand I think it is horrible for universities to lock their students into an email system like this, but on the other hand I don't see it as that big of a deal. Just use a separate email system for your personal correspondence.
You don't have a choice of email system when you get out into the real world either... you are stuck using something compatible with whatever your company gives you. If you have a more liberal company then you may have various options open to you, but very security conscious companies have extremely draconian email systems and policies.
I always tell people to send me personal emails at my personal email address. It protects my privacy, and it also protects the company. I always *assume* that my manager may be peeking into to my company inbox at any time, and I write my emails accordingly.
In this particular case the universities may be doing it not only the save money, but also for their own protection. If students are forced to use separate email systems for their personal stuff, which may well include illegal activities, that's a win for the university. They'd like nothing more than to be able to say that their email systems are monitored and are strictly for educational purposes. That gives them better cover when the RIAA comes knocking on their door.
Opting out of pre-screen credit offers should clear up most or all of the "random" credit checks that appear on your credit reports. You can opt-out in several ways that are listed at http://www.creditsourceonline.com/opt-out.html.
The real answer is to use open source software that can be verified to be hack-proof.
A better lock on the Diebold machines would just lead to a false sense of security. The keys would be more difficult to get, but I have no doubt that people looking to rig elections would still be able to get them.
At least with these generic locks it is a known issue, and in theory we know not to rely on them to protect the contents of the machine. So the machines will be guarded better. In theory.
Assuming that each pixel is either ON or OFF, then you are correct.
However, I think what they probably mean (though perhaps were unclear about) is that the image has one pixel that is very bright, and the pixels immediately next to that pixel are maybe "half" as bright. A pixel that is only half-bright would indicate that the object only "fills" half of the pixel.
Great question. I'm in a cynical mood, so here we go.
Wish I had a well researched answer, but the best I can do is pull the following out of my ass:
Political science has developed to the point that governments, ours included, are becoming quite adept at manipulating the public.
It has reached the point where, after realizing that their greatest threat is from the educated, they have made the "educated elite" their enemy and worked hard to curtail higher education, thus depriving the future of their greatest detractors.
They have realized that it is not so much deception that provokes anger amongst the population, but instead a perception of weakness. So Bush never admits he is wrong. It is not that he is an arrogant bastard (though he may well be). This is an intentional tactic because his people know it works. Otherwise Bush's presidency would have ended long ago.
Some of the tactics they use are new, based on the latest psychology and marketing theories. Some are very old, pulled straight from Machiavelli's "The Prince".
The key thing to understand is that we have politicians in power now (and not just the Republicans) who ultimately care only about holding onto their power. They may ocassionaly indulge in doing the people's business, but it is not their highest priority.
And why do they want to stay in power? Money. Their money, their family's money, their friend's money, the money of people that look or think like them.
So to answer your question: things will change when enough people realize that they are being SUCKED DRY by the regime in power. And no sooner.
When (if?) the current regime finally does lose power, there may be some catalyst that is given credit. This catalyst, whatever it ends up being, will just be the spark, however. The fuel will be realization by a large segment of the population that they were suckered, duped, and plundered.
Here's something to think about:
The economy is, by most measures, humming along right now. The stock market is doing quite fine. At the same time, and not by any coicidence, I would submit, the national debt has soared from about $20K per person to nearly $30K per person.
Who do you think profitted most by the market being propped up with all this spending? Who would have suffered the most if the market had collapsed without all of this spending? Will the market *ever* collapse? If the people in power can just keep spending more and more to keep the market going up and up, who wins and who loses?
Hint: rich people can always leave the country and go somewhere else when the cards come crashing down.
Re:Sudo insecure if same account used for email
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
sure, if they are dumb enough to use the same password for email as they do for their account...
Right... which happens to be the default behavior of every linux distro I've ever worked with.
Sudo insecure if same account used for email
on
Sudo vs. Root
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The most insecure thing about sudo that I see occurring frequently is that a person with an account that has sudo access uses the SAME account for unencrypted email.
So basically their password gets sent openly when they login via POP to check their email. Anyone with a sniffer can get their password, login, and have full sudo access.
Now that's great security for ya.
That's why when I install a distro like Ubuntu that defaults to using sudo I always make the first account a dedicated admin account. Which sort of raises the question of why not just use "root" in the first place...
No, it most certainly is not. ID does not meet many of the requirements of science (eg, falsifiable).
ID does not undermine evolution. ID counters only the notion that everything in the universe except for buildings, glow in the dark cats and open pit copper mines are mere events of random chance.
Here you show off how naive you really are. Evolution is not about random chance at all, and you've been completely misled and mal-educated if you think it does (or maybe you're just an idiot... who knows). Evolution is about NATURAL SELECTION which is NOT a random process.
Yes, there are random genetic changes that occur all the time, but that is not the focus of the theory of evolution. NATURAL SELECTION is the mechanism through which evolution occurs. In any given situation, certain genetic variation will impart a slightly better chance of survival. This is not "flip and coin and see which genetic variation moves forward". The inevitable trend is towards greater and greater complexity. No "intelligent designing" is necessary.
And we're glad that someone came along and pointed it out! You must be right because you speak with such fervor. And we all know that truth is determined by the intensity with which an idea is believed.
Intelligent design is exactly what belongs in a classroom. But it has nothing to do with religion.
Which classroom are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting that this is a topic that gradeschool through highschool kids should be studying? What classes should be dropped so that this particular pet subject of yours can be studied?
There isn't a biological engineer on the planet who wouldn't love to create life from raw elements and watch them evolve into something more complex.
Even if this is true... so? Why does this suddenly become a topic that MUST BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL?
If you want to have a real education then it should be along the lines of:
Let's say you wanted to create a world as complicated as earth - what knowledge and technology would this require?
I always suspected that I never had a real education. You know, actually, this sounds vaguely like some of the stuff that was discussed in a science-fiction literature course I once took. So maybe I did have a real education. I agree, science-fiction literature should be a required course for ALL students. No graduation until you can recite Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics from memory!! Moo-haha!!
Can an intelligence construct a world? Absolutely.
Oh? Really? Have you met these aliens? I've read plenty of science-fiction that makes the same assertion, but I never knew it was an established fact. But you speak with such authority that it MUST be.
Can we? No. Why not? That's what physicists and geological engineers and biologists and a whole bunch of other people are trying to answer.
Honestly, this is an interesting question. But this is hardly what physicists and geological engineers and biologists are spending their time studying. Their studies may tengentially relate to this subject, but I suspect that the number of scientists that are specifically working on this goal could fit in a small room.
The people who are rabidly against the concept of intelligent design are nothing more than arrogant freaks who declare that man may be able to build evolving life in the lab but nobody else in the universe has ever been able to do so, nor ever will
Sorry, but you sir, are the arrogant freak. We are not necessarily against discussion of this "intelligent design" concept. Indeed, it has been the subject of many science-fiction books that a whole lot of us here on Slashdot have certainly read. What we are against is teaching ID in a classroom in a way to undermine the extremely solid theory of evolution.
It doesn't matter if ID is real or, if it is, who did the design. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is the question of "how could it be done".
Sure. Its an interesting question. There are lots of other interesting questions that people can ask as well. This is just one of many. Take your self-righteous frothy mouthed zealotry and find a more useful outlet for your overly abundant enthusiasm for this particular concept.
I've met several dive masters and scuba instructors that said they used to work in IT. The main reason that I remember this detail is that it is an occasional fantasy of mine to chuck all of this crap and move to a nice dive spot and become a dive master.
Several famous SF authors were also programmers at one time. I don't want to throw out names from memory since I could get a few wrong, but I'm quite certain that I've seen quite a few authors list programming in their employment histories. Perhaps someone else with a better memory can throw out a few names?
I believe that the ex-CEO of Delta, Leo Mullen (sp?), was an IT consultant at one time.
So, there's a few things I can think of off the top of my head.
Gopher?!?! Now there's ancient history...
on
A New TCP/IP Classic
·
· Score: 3, Funny
He covers everything from networking fundamentals to individual application protocols such as Gopher.
And is coverage of Gopher supposed to be a selling point for this book??
I haven't used Gopher since... well, actually, I never used Gopher for anything other than idle curiousity to see what the hell it was. The Web made Gopher completely obsolescent.
Talk about a way to pigeonhole your book as "old news".
Coverage of bittorrent would be far more interesting and relevant.
I may be slightly swimming against the mainstream opinion here, but I have absolutely no problem with simply prioritizing traffic. In the case of online gaming, for example, making sure that there are no latency spikes is something for which I, as a consumer, might be willing to pay a premium.
And let's be honest, the impact on websites would not be noticeable. There's generally more than plenty of bandwidth for ALL the traffic moving through major routers, and in the cases where a standard packet is delayed to let higher priority traffic pass, it would likely be for only a matter of milliseconds over whatever normal delay might exist due to the congestion. Even for VoIP this probably wouldn't be noticed.
HOWEVER, what would be totally unacceptable would be implementing false caps on "low priority" traffic, in essence forcing "undesirable" traffic to be slowed down for no technically justifiable reason. That would be very very very bad, and it could easily be used in all the sorts of anti-competitive ways that everyone else is talking about.
If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it.
So if you want honest feedback on your sexual prowess from your girlfriend then you should charge a fee, eh? Hmmm. I am intrigued by this concept and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I think the benefits of being able to run multiple operating systems are more numerous than just the single case of development that you listed. For a hosting company, the ability to provide multiple operating systems provides a great deal of flexibility. And for users, it gives one the abillity to check out various new distributions easily, as well as the potential to use different distros for specific tasks for which they are best suited (for example, perhaps you really like the VPN support of a particular distro).
The above article mentions that the gland that lubricates the eyes on crocodiles is near their throat, so crocodiles can appear to be tearing while eating. But it says nothing about the tears providing lubrication for their swallowing.
You have a reference for this? I can't google anything on it.
I may be the only fool here who had no idea what "crocodile tears" are, but according to http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cro1.htm, "to weep crocodile tears is to pretend a sorrow that one doesn't in fact feel, to create a hypocritical show of emotion. The idea comes from the ancient belief that crocodiles weep while luring or devouring their prey."
Slashdot Mirror
My most enjoyable security check was in Finland, where they had a greeter passing out candy to make the wait in line more pleasant.
If that is all true, then Mr. Hotz should not only be able to successfully fight these charges, but he can (and should) go after the police officers individually under "false arrest under color of law" statutes.
I guess I'm the stupid one here, but I don't understand the basic premise. Can someone please explain exactly what this "boundary layer" of motionless air is on a regular heatsink/fan? Why/how does it form and exactly how big of a problem is it really? I am just not understanding how there can be any motionless air unless there are some eddies formed by the fins or some such. Help! Thanks.
Uh-oh, this is going to be a big problem for the United States since our entire fiscal policy is to deficit spend and avoid really solving any problems until the planet explodes in 2012. It is going to be mighty embarrassing when the debt collectors come a knockin' in 2013. "There's nobody home, go away!"
To answer the question of whether or not she should be allowed to compete as a female if she is not 100% female, one must first consider the question of whether women should be competing in a separate class at all.
Let's avoid the underlying moral and philosophical issues and just stick with the practical reason for setting things up so women compete separately: approximately 50% of the population is female, so it is a political necessity. You can argue all sorts of other reasons, but when it really comes down to it, that is the crux of it.
And if you really think about it, we don't actually have women competing against women in one group and men competing against men in another group. What we REALLY have is women competing against women in one group, and EVERYONE ELSE competing in another group. Men are not set up as a protected class, it is only women who are set up as a protected class. If a sufficiently gifted female runner wanted to compete against men, I very much suspect that she'd be allowed to do so.
Once you realize the reality that female sports are basically a protected class based on a political reality, the answer to the other question becomes pretty simple: anyone who is not 100% female is not part of the "protected class" and should therefore compete in the "everyone else" category.
Is it fair? Maybe not. But how is having women compete separately "fair" in the first place? It is just for political expediency, and personally I don't see anything wrong with it if it keeps 50% of the population happier and more fulfilled than they otherwise would be without causing any undue hardship on a significant part of the population.
Convoluted or obfuscated code is no benefit to anyone and deserves scorn.
However, there is nothing about being a brilliant programmer that requires one to write convoluted or obfuscated code.
The best code needs very little documentation because it is immediately obvious to any other programmer what the code is doing, and long comments are only required in sections of the code where the purpose of the code is not immediately obvious.
It does require a dose of humility to intentionally add minor inefficiencies to a program to make it more clear, though, and it sounds like the Josh in this story was sorely lacking such humility.
Using five lines of code to show the intermediate assignments in a long calculation instead of doing it all in one line of code can make the logic flow easier to follow by orders of magnitude, but some programmers are unwilling to deface the elegance of their design with such simplicities.
Ultimately the true genius is the person who can write brilliant code that is also easy to read and modify.
The President swears to uphold the Constitution, but what if he chooses not to?
As you point out, the worst that happens is the court eventually overrules, but often the damage has already been done and the President can just try again in a slightly modified way.
Is such disregard for the Constitution treason?
At the very least it is an impeachable offense, but only if congress has the will to impeach.
So that chick in Babel expected no one to look at her hairy monster?
My idea never seems to get traction, but I still think its a good one and will repeat it once again:
If you INTEND to make your wifi open access, then you should signify this by including the key word "[PUBLIC]" or [PUB]" at the start (e.g. "[PUBLIC] Joe's Wifi" or "[PUB] Megaboob, Inc").
That makes the intent crystal clear (some other key words could also be included to provide flexibility).
I agree that any open wifi spot ought to be assumed to be public in the first place, but since the law seems to disagree, I believe my idea is the next best alternative. Software that searches for hotspots could be updated to look for these key words to indicate if the hotspots are intended to be public or not.
Long term, it would be nice if the wifi standard were updated so that a bit could be toggled which would indicate whether the hotspot is intended to be public or not. In the configuration menu it could be right next to the "Make SSID Visible" checkbox.
On one hand I think it is horrible for universities to lock their students into an email system like this, but on the other hand I don't see it as that big of a deal. Just use a separate email system for your personal correspondence.
You don't have a choice of email system when you get out into the real world either... you are stuck using something compatible with whatever your company gives you. If you have a more liberal company then you may have various options open to you, but very security conscious companies have extremely draconian email systems and policies.
I always tell people to send me personal emails at my personal email address. It protects my privacy, and it also protects the company. I always *assume* that my manager may be peeking into to my company inbox at any time, and I write my emails accordingly.
In this particular case the universities may be doing it not only the save money, but also for their own protection. If students are forced to use separate email systems for their personal stuff, which may well include illegal activities, that's a win for the university. They'd like nothing more than to be able to say that their email systems are monitored and are strictly for educational purposes. That gives them better cover when the RIAA comes knocking on their door.
Opting out of pre-screen credit offers should clear up most or all of the "random" credit checks that appear on your credit reports. You can opt-out in several ways that are listed at http://www.creditsourceonline.com/opt-out.html.
The real answer is to use open source software that can be verified to be hack-proof.
A better lock on the Diebold machines would just lead to a false sense of security. The keys would be more difficult to get, but I have no doubt that people looking to rig elections would still be able to get them.
At least with these generic locks it is a known issue, and in theory we know not to rely on them to protect the contents of the machine. So the machines will be guarded better. In theory.
In practice... man are we screwed.
Assuming that each pixel is either ON or OFF, then you are correct.
However, I think what they probably mean (though perhaps were unclear about) is that the image has one pixel that is very bright, and the pixels immediately next to that pixel are maybe "half" as bright. A pixel that is only half-bright would indicate that the object only "fills" half of the pixel.
Thus, the object is 1.5 pixels in size.
Great question. I'm in a cynical mood, so here we go.
Wish I had a well researched answer, but the best I can do is pull the following out of my ass:
Political science has developed to the point that governments, ours included, are becoming quite adept at manipulating the public.
It has reached the point where, after realizing that their greatest threat is from the educated, they have made the "educated elite" their enemy and worked hard to curtail higher education, thus depriving the future of their greatest detractors.
They have realized that it is not so much deception that provokes anger amongst the population, but instead a perception of weakness. So Bush never admits he is wrong. It is not that he is an arrogant bastard (though he may well be). This is an intentional tactic because his people know it works. Otherwise Bush's presidency would have ended long ago.
Some of the tactics they use are new, based on the latest psychology and marketing theories. Some are very old, pulled straight from Machiavelli's "The Prince".
The key thing to understand is that we have politicians in power now (and not just the Republicans) who ultimately care only about holding onto their power. They may ocassionaly indulge in doing the people's business, but it is not their highest priority.
And why do they want to stay in power? Money. Their money, their family's money, their friend's money, the money of people that look or think like them.
So to answer your question: things will change when enough people realize that they are being SUCKED DRY by the regime in power. And no sooner.
When (if?) the current regime finally does lose power, there may be some catalyst that is given credit. This catalyst, whatever it ends up being, will just be the spark, however. The fuel will be realization by a large segment of the population that they were suckered, duped, and plundered.
Here's something to think about:
The economy is, by most measures, humming along right now. The stock market is doing quite fine. At the same time, and not by any coicidence, I would submit, the national debt has soared from about $20K per person to nearly $30K per person.
Who do you think profitted most by the market being propped up with all this spending? Who would have suffered the most if the market had collapsed without all of this spending? Will the market *ever* collapse? If the people in power can just keep spending more and more to keep the market going up and up, who wins and who loses?
Hint: rich people can always leave the country and go somewhere else when the cards come crashing down.
sure, if they are dumb enough to use the same password for email as they do for their account...
Right... which happens to be the default behavior of every linux distro I've ever worked with.
The most insecure thing about sudo that I see occurring frequently is that a person with an account that has sudo access uses the SAME account for unencrypted email.
So basically their password gets sent openly when they login via POP to check their email. Anyone with a sniffer can get their password, login, and have full sudo access.
Now that's great security for ya.
That's why when I install a distro like Ubuntu that defaults to using sudo I always make the first account a dedicated admin account. Which sort of raises the question of why not just use "root" in the first place...
Because it is true? Because it is science?
No, it most certainly is not. ID does not meet many of the requirements of science (eg, falsifiable).
ID does not undermine evolution. ID counters only the notion that everything in the universe except for buildings, glow in the dark cats and open pit copper mines are mere events of random chance.
Here you show off how naive you really are. Evolution is not about random chance at all, and you've been completely misled and mal-educated if you think it does (or maybe you're just an idiot... who knows). Evolution is about NATURAL SELECTION which is NOT a random process.
Yes, there are random genetic changes that occur all the time, but that is not the focus of the theory of evolution. NATURAL SELECTION is the mechanism through which evolution occurs. In any given situation, certain genetic variation will impart a slightly better chance of survival. This is not "flip and coin and see which genetic variation moves forward". The inevitable trend is towards greater and greater complexity. No "intelligent designing" is necessary.
Educate yourself before you open your trap again.
Holy freaking smokes are you ever wrong.
And we're glad that someone came along and pointed it out! You must be right because you speak with such fervor. And we all know that truth is determined by the intensity with which an idea is believed.
Intelligent design is exactly what belongs in a classroom. But it has nothing to do with religion.
Which classroom are you talking about? Are you seriously suggesting that this is a topic that gradeschool through highschool kids should be studying? What classes should be dropped so that this particular pet subject of yours can be studied?
There isn't a biological engineer on the planet who wouldn't love to create life from raw elements and watch them evolve into something more complex.
Even if this is true... so? Why does this suddenly become a topic that MUST BE TAUGHT IN SCHOOL?
If you want to have a real education then it should be along the lines of:
Let's say you wanted to create a world as complicated as earth - what knowledge and technology would this require?
I always suspected that I never had a real education. You know, actually, this sounds vaguely like some of the stuff that was discussed in a science-fiction literature course I once took. So maybe I did have a real education. I agree, science-fiction literature should be a required course for ALL students. No graduation until you can recite Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics from memory!! Moo-haha!!
Can an intelligence construct a world? Absolutely.
Oh? Really? Have you met these aliens? I've read plenty of science-fiction that makes the same assertion, but I never knew it was an established fact. But you speak with such authority that it MUST be.
Can we? No. Why not? That's what physicists and geological engineers and biologists and a whole bunch of other people are trying to answer.
Honestly, this is an interesting question. But this is hardly what physicists and geological engineers and biologists are spending their time studying. Their studies may tengentially relate to this subject, but I suspect that the number of scientists that are specifically working on this goal could fit in a small room.
The people who are rabidly against the concept of intelligent design are nothing more than arrogant freaks who declare that man may be able to build evolving life in the lab but nobody else in the universe has ever been able to do so, nor ever will
Sorry, but you sir, are the arrogant freak. We are not necessarily against discussion of this "intelligent design" concept. Indeed, it has been the subject of many science-fiction books that a whole lot of us here on Slashdot have certainly read. What we are against is teaching ID in a classroom in a way to undermine the extremely solid theory of evolution.
It doesn't matter if ID is real or, if it is, who did the design. It really doesn't matter. What does matter is the question of "how could it be done".
Sure. Its an interesting question. There are lots of other interesting questions that people can ask as well. This is just one of many. Take your self-righteous frothy mouthed zealotry and find a more useful outlet for your overly abundant enthusiasm for this particular concept.
I've met several dive masters and scuba instructors that said they used to work in IT. The main reason that I remember this detail is that it is an occasional fantasy of mine to chuck all of this crap and move to a nice dive spot and become a dive master.
Several famous SF authors were also programmers at one time. I don't want to throw out names from memory since I could get a few wrong, but I'm quite certain that I've seen quite a few authors list programming in their employment histories. Perhaps someone else with a better memory can throw out a few names?
I believe that the ex-CEO of Delta, Leo Mullen (sp?), was an IT consultant at one time.
So, there's a few things I can think of off the top of my head.
He covers everything from networking fundamentals to individual application protocols such as Gopher.
And is coverage of Gopher supposed to be a selling point for this book??
I haven't used Gopher since... well, actually, I never used Gopher for anything other than idle curiousity to see what the hell it was. The Web made Gopher completely obsolescent.
Talk about a way to pigeonhole your book as "old news".
Coverage of bittorrent would be far more interesting and relevant.
I may be slightly swimming against the mainstream opinion here, but I have absolutely no problem with simply prioritizing traffic. In the case of online gaming, for example, making sure that there are no latency spikes is something for which I, as a consumer, might be willing to pay a premium.
And let's be honest, the impact on websites would not be noticeable. There's generally more than plenty of bandwidth for ALL the traffic moving through major routers, and in the cases where a standard packet is delayed to let higher priority traffic pass, it would likely be for only a matter of milliseconds over whatever normal delay might exist due to the congestion. Even for VoIP this probably wouldn't be noticed.
HOWEVER, what would be totally unacceptable would be implementing false caps on "low priority" traffic, in essence forcing "undesirable" traffic to be slowed down for no technically justifiable reason. That would be very very very bad, and it could easily be used in all the sorts of anti-competitive ways that everyone else is talking about.
If someone is paying for something and they're not happy - then you're going to hear about it.
So if you want honest feedback on your sexual prowess from your girlfriend then you should charge a fee, eh? Hmmm. I am intrigued by this concept and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I think the benefits of being able to run multiple operating systems are more numerous than just the single case of development that you listed. For a hosting company, the ability to provide multiple operating systems provides a great deal of flexibility. And for users, it gives one the abillity to check out various new distributions easily, as well as the potential to use different distros for specific tasks for which they are best suited (for example, perhaps you really like the VPN support of a particular distro).
The above article mentions that the gland that lubricates the eyes on crocodiles is near their throat, so crocodiles can appear to be tearing while eating. But it says nothing about the tears providing lubrication for their swallowing.
You have a reference for this? I can't google anything on it.
I may be the only fool here who had no idea what "crocodile tears" are, but according to http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cro1.htm, "to weep crocodile tears is to pretend a sorrow that one doesn't in fact feel, to create a hypocritical show of emotion. The idea comes from the ancient belief that crocodiles weep while luring or devouring their prey."
So now I know.