While the art isn't as polished (although it has gotten a lot better in the last year or so) as some comics, the humor is fantastic. Sort of a goofy-buddy bit, it doesn't have a lot of long story arcs, but has a lot of one-off gags which are pretty damn intellectual. And a lot of slap-stick humor. It's a good, light read.
Teaching is usally more cushy and stable in comparison.
And isn't that the truth. I was a programmer and did DBA work for three years, until I switched to teaching. Because when IBM cuts 500 mainly tech jobs in your state, and you get laid off, and all your friends with more certs and coursework in programming than you get laid off, teaching starts to look damn good.
Once I get my lvl 2 teaching certification, it's pretty much as good as tenure. I have to majorly screw up to get fired. Like abuse a kid, or repeatedly come in under the influence. Compare that with my last tech job, when I got laid off RANDOMLY as part of a 5% reduction in salary/benefits costs. That's right - no performance based review, no cost/benefit analysis, a random (less managers and friends of the president) layoff. I had been there almost 3 years, but they laid off another worker who had been there LESS THAN TWO WEEKS.
As we say at school, this would be the best job in the world if it wasn't for the kids and the administration. Regardless of my bitching about school, I sure as hell don't miss my time in IT. And I have summers off to program and screw around back in IT land, while getting paid the whole time.
On earth, we have two things which serve to limit mountain elevation:
A) Badass weathering and erosion. More weathering than most other planets.
B) Tectonic Plate movement.
Mars has one bigass volcano because there is no plate movement. For millions of years it has remained in the same spot, growing ever higher and higher. Compare that to Hawaii, which is a chain of islands precisely because our plates move, and thus don't have the chance to get truly monstrous in height over the same length of time.
This is not to say that Mars doesn't have erosion - it does, an we're pretty sure that it's still going on. But water, ice and plants do a lot of damage to our rocks, all things that Mars doesn't really have a lot of.
Actually, they do. A surprising number of people don't get that it's a satire site. There's now a massive page collecting all the facts people litter the site with. It's really quite sad. The founding father gets absoultely wilde about that sort of thing.
My experience has been the same - my mom works for a small public library, and they had no end of problems on their public internet terminal. Once I had them start logging in as a restricted user, (Win2k) and removed all traces of IE from that desktop, they have had 0 problems with browser hijacking, search plugins, and spyware.
And not to be an ass, but isn't FF's code open? Of COURSE you will find more bugs, because more people can look at it. # of bugs found for IE has no real correlation to # bugs that EXIST for IE.
I am absolutely horrified at the implications of your post. You forgot the "mass sterilizations at puberty" which is the cornerstone of the whole plan.
I'm not sure what the technical label is for "evil, right-to-reproduction stealing bastard", but I'm looking for it. For many years now I've been all for forcing people to pass a god damn test before they have kids. Having a kid is a hell of a lot more responsibility than driving a car, or teaching kids, both which require licencing.
And while a lot of people will wail and complain about this:
A. If you aren't an idiot, you can learn how to properly care for a child. If you already know how to do this, the test will be damn easy for you.
B. If you are an idiot, you can learn to enjoy doing something other than having kids.
And to be frank, if you don't want kids, the amount of effort you need to invest in remaining kid-free is near 0.
Add hurricanes and the fact that likewise, New Orleans is and has been sinking since it was built, the prospect of rebuilding NO in place seems like sheer idiocy.
But I guess it comes down to how many people actually want to go back. From media interviews with a lot of the refugees in Texas, a large percentage may not go back. That sort of migration complicates the decision on where/how one rebuilds NO.
And part, IMHO, of the problem is that we have a system in place which encourages the poor to stay poor. It's called a welfare system, but it is far from well.
When you doll out money to people for YEARS, without helping/forcing them to better themselves and their lives, they grow complacent. Sure, they might not be living in a sweet house in a nice neighborhood, but they are free to spend their time as they will. Some watch tv, some form gangs, do drugs, play basketball all day, sit on the corner and play an instrument (in NO) - but they don't need to better themselves to survive. They don't need to further their education, learn new skills, read something or do anything to improve their place in life. The govt makes sure they don't starve, and that they have a place to live.
It's easy to be poor and ignorant when the government doesn't discourage it. I live in rural, northern New England. Around here, people think it's INSANE that the people of NO couldn't survive for four god damn days without assistance. If we get tagged with a blizzard or a major ice storm, it's quite likely that parts of the area will be cut off for that long or longer. When that sort of weather is headed this way, people stock up on shit, and hunker down. People living in houses/apts that rely upon electricity for heat either get themselves some stand-alone heaters, or get the hell out of there. In large part it is that people around here take great pride in being self-sufficient. Another part is that a substantially lower percentage rely upon govt assistance for their daily needs than in a typical inner-city. Not that people around here aren't as poor - they just generally put a bit more effort into improving their situation in life than a lot of city-poor.
Not everybody chooses to be poor. But our current welfare system is designed to make it easy, and it does little to encourage people in the system to make improvements in their lives. I hope that this disaster will make someone, somewhere look at the underlying cause of poverty in this nation. If we can't convince the poor to learn and do new things to help them escape from poverty, perhaps it's time to force them to escape from poverty. If we continue to propagate a system where large swathes of the population are cradled by the government, we'll continue to have shit happen like this disaster in New Orleans, when the govt was gone, for just a moment.
And for fuck's sake folks, stop building below sea level, in an area plagued by hurricanes each year. It'd be one thing if New Orleans was stable, but jesus - it's FUCKING SINKING. It has been for the last few hundred years. The Netherlands can do it because they are on bedrock, and don't have hurricanes. Those things are important. Aaah, shit, I think I just ran out of rant. Adios.
You are indeed correct - however, I'm not talking (or at least thinking) about Brittany, or any of the other huge stars of the modern media. I'm talking about all those little groups, for whom a million CDs would be a huge deal.
For a grand price of nearly free, a Label could slap a half-album of moderate-bitrate mp3s into the p2p world. If nobody cared, that no-name group and label would be out nothing. If a million people did, they would sell a ton more CDs than they were going to before this exposure.
You are right - it will never compare to the big money makers - and that's why it will never happen. But if some of the minor labels (assuming there are any left now) did this, they could potentially expose obscure artists to people who might be interested. For very, very little money or effort.
If it were just me alone, no, no it wouldn't be a good example. But when a million people buy an extra CD that they normally wouldn't have purchased, it is a big deal. I'd love to see a study on the p2p effect done on a large scale, and done well. I doubt that I'm the only person who's purchased a few extra CDs due to this sort of band exposure. Had I not gotten the mp3s, I wouldn't have purchased those CDs.
If the music industry can get a few million more people to buy this way, it'd be a pretty smart business move. Much smarter than, say, suing your customers.
As a good example of this, I stopped regularly buying CDs in the late 90s, as they neared the $20 mark. Since about 2000, I have purchased a grand total of 3 CDs. One of these CDs was a new release from a band I was (formally) a big fan of, and I own most of their other CDs.
But the other two are the interesting ones - a friend uploaded me a bunch of mp3s during a lan party a few years ago. In this mix were two non-mainstream bands, Opeth and Soilwork. You can't hear them on the radio, and it's only been in the last few years that they have begun to show up in the US. (at Ozzfest)
I now own CDs from both these bands, and am considering more. But I already have the music on my computer - nicely infringed. Why would I buy more of their CDs?
*Audio quality - I can rip at the bitrate I want my music ripped at *Album art *To support two kickass bands which aren't trying to sound like all the rest of the music played on mainstream radio stations.
Since I missed the last few Ozzfests, and they don't get radio airtime, would I ever have found these bands otherwise? No. If it wasn't for my infringing friend (who also has started buying their albums) neither of us would have ever heard of these bands, nor dropped any money on their cds.
Infringement can be one kickass tool for exposure, and that's the part I wish the *AAs would get through their thick skulls. Why waste a zillion dollars advertising and paying off DJs, when you can release 1/3 the songs on a P2P network, and let people drive up business through word of mouth&file sharing? Even if you can't do this for your top-tier artists, there are plenty of new artists you could "test out" like this for very little money.
To really answer your question, what they (not me - I don't know crap about linux kernels, other than which one I've just upgraded to) need to know is what you'e using your computer(s) for. Are the advantages of the 2.6 kernel as listed above advantages for you?
Personally, I moved from Win2k to linux (gentoo) due to instability in 3rd party software which I could get decent replacements for in linux. I generally run the lastest gentoo kernel, and haven't noticed any instability other than what my n00bishness has artificially created. Not that that helps you at all, I'm guesing.;)
But if 25% of those projects make some major gain, that's only $20,000 a project. That's not really all that expensive, to get work done which "normally" wouldn't have gotten done, or would have taken far longer. In addition, this has been a nice bit of publicity for a lot of projects, and overall a nice community effort.
It seems like there's been a ton of communication between participants and the orgs they are working with, and that can only help everyone involved. Not to mention that there are now probably a hundred more people who will feel confident contributing (for free) to OS projects in the future, and who have the knowledge and skills to help out.
So congradulations to all who participated. I'm looking forward to being able to use all the nifty things you got to make on your summer break. Yeah, I'm jealous...
But the idiocy of this is that *households* don't use 100% of the energy in the US. If they did, great, we'd save energy.
Unfortunately, a great deal of the energy used in this country is at work. The hundreds of thousands of people who work in call centers or cube farms never touch the lights. They are on when they come in, and they are on when they leave. In fact, MANY businesses leave their lights on 24/7. If not all the time, they at least light their buildings 8am-5pm, regardless of how bright outside it is.
If it's lighter during the day, we won't use our computers any less. Our refrigerators won't run less. We'll still use AC. And our offices will still be lit by banks of fluorescent lights, heated and cooled by poorly balanced HVAC units which are further thrown off by morons with their windows open, and rooms filled by racks of inefficient computers wasting ton of energy in the form of heat.
If we really want to save energy, let's start by requiring government and military installations to have energy efficient buildings and policies, and enforce national building codes for households and businesses so they are well insulated and energy efficient. Throw in minimum fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles, and THAT would make a difference. This daylight savings extension won't do much to save energy, I'm afraid.
If I understand you correctly, I would have to disagree. While there are still problems, the amount of useful data needed is far less. Currently, if you are setting up a phone conference between CA and NY, you have to know both the time differential, AND what time both parties start and end work. In the US, there is a fair amount of flex in "normal business hours". Some places are 9am-5pm, some are 8am-4pm; out in the sticks, it's not uncommon to find places that run first shift 7am-3pm.
Rather than all the confusion, if CA emails NY and says "Call me at 1600 UTC", they can both instantly know whether or not they are in the office at 1600 UT. While CA may have hours 1600 to 0000 UTC, and NY is at the office between 1300 and 2100 UTC, both immediately know that 1600 UTC is a workable time for a conference call.
Sure, you still need to know that you can call your CA contact between 1300 and 0000, but that's LESS information than if you need to know that their office hours are 8am-5pm AND they are on a three hour differential. (and the way people in this country do math...) I think if we got rid of time zones, and businesses simply set their own local hours, it would simplify quite a lot of the stuff we do.
Plane trip from LAX to JFK - leaving LAX at 1600, arriving at JFK at 2000. It will take four hours. What time should you get to the airport in LA? 1500, so you have time to check in. What time do you need to be picked up from JFK? 20:30 - add a half hour to get off the plane and get your baggage. All this is easy. And additionally, you just need to know that NYC works from 1300 to 2100, and you'll be arriving just before the end of the work day.
As a former astronomer, UTC is far, far easier to work with than local timezones. And let me emphasize *former*, just in case I screwed my math up above. If I did, I know someone will point it out. Thanks in advance if you do.
And unless I totally misunderstood the article, "darkmail attacks" are nothing more than spam. Granted, in very large quantites, but nothing that businesses with "tempting" domains haven't been experiencing for years.
It's just that "dictionary attacks" of hundreds of thousands of to: addresses are being used on smaller domains with more frequency.
Same problem, same methods. Spammers are just casting a bigger net, as their success rates are diminishing due to filtering.
Not only is competition a wonderful thing, but I'd much rather Apple lead the way in "*nix becomes a common common on the desktop, and is therefore a target for malware, botnet attacks, and viruses". Why? Because they have the funds and marketing ability to pull through it, much like MS has done while their security has been under attack from all sides.
Linux can learn from Apple's mistakes in the "major desktop player" arena, and continue to get better, without having to be on the front lines. It will make life a little easier, and a lot less expensive for all the small-userbase distros. It's been a long time since there was a sizable non-MS distro common on the desktop, and I bet we'll be in for a lot of surprises in the near future.
If they voted differently than you had wished, pick up the phone tomorrow, and let them know. Tell people you meet. Do something. Don't just bitch on slashdot.
(Unless you can't vote in the US, at which point bitching is about all you can do about this latest vote.)
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap!!! You just listed 2 out of the 3 comics I still read!! The other is:
Casey and Andy
While the art isn't as polished (although it has gotten a lot better in the last year or so) as some comics, the humor is fantastic. Sort of a goofy-buddy bit, it doesn't have a lot of long story arcs, but has a lot of one-off gags which are pretty damn intellectual. And a lot of slap-stick humor. It's a good, light read.
Teaching is usally more cushy and stable in comparison.
And isn't that the truth. I was a programmer and did DBA work for three years, until I switched to teaching. Because when IBM cuts 500 mainly tech jobs in your state, and you get laid off, and all your friends with more certs and coursework in programming than you get laid off, teaching starts to look damn good.
Once I get my lvl 2 teaching certification, it's pretty much as good as tenure. I have to majorly screw up to get fired. Like abuse a kid, or repeatedly come in under the influence. Compare that with my last tech job, when I got laid off RANDOMLY as part of a 5% reduction in salary/benefits costs. That's right - no performance based review, no cost/benefit analysis, a random (less managers and friends of the president) layoff. I had been there almost 3 years, but they laid off another worker who had been there LESS THAN TWO WEEKS.
As we say at school, this would be the best job in the world if it wasn't for the kids and the administration. Regardless of my bitching about school, I sure as hell don't miss my time in IT. And I have summers off to program and screw around back in IT land, while getting paid the whole time.
On earth, we have two things which serve to limit mountain elevation:
A) Badass weathering and erosion. More weathering than most other planets.
B) Tectonic Plate movement.
Mars has one bigass volcano because there is no plate movement. For millions of years it has remained in the same spot, growing ever higher and higher. Compare that to Hawaii, which is a chain of islands precisely because our plates move, and thus don't have the chance to get truly monstrous in height over the same length of time.
This is not to say that Mars doesn't have erosion - it does, an we're pretty sure that it's still going on. But water, ice and plants do a lot of damage to our rocks, all things that Mars doesn't really have a lot of.
Actually, they do. A surprising number of people don't get that it's a satire site. There's now a massive page collecting all the facts people litter the site with. It's really quite sad. The founding father gets absoultely wilde about that sort of thing.
My experience has been the same - my mom works for a small public library, and they had no end of problems on their public internet terminal. Once I had them start logging in as a restricted user, (Win2k) and removed all traces of IE from that desktop, they have had 0 problems with browser hijacking, search plugins, and spyware.
And not to be an ass, but isn't FF's code open? Of COURSE you will find more bugs, because more people can look at it. # of bugs found for IE has no real correlation to # bugs that EXIST for IE.
40 billion what? Oh, nevermind. I'm sure they can corner the market in hope while they (momentarily) flounder.
I was horrified that you left out the mass sterilizations. I guess your browser didn't render the tags correctly, eh? ;)
Um, it works for me. In fact, I really like this setup.
Because Linux screams on a fast, cheeper AMD because of it.
I am absolutely horrified at the implications of your post. You forgot the "mass sterilizations at puberty" which is the cornerstone of the whole plan.
I'm not sure what the technical label is for "evil, right-to-reproduction stealing bastard", but I'm looking for it. For many years now I've been all for forcing people to pass a god damn test before they have kids. Having a kid is a hell of a lot more responsibility than driving a car, or teaching kids, both which require licencing.
And while a lot of people will wail and complain about this:
A. If you aren't an idiot, you can learn how to properly care for a child. If you already know how to do this, the test will be damn easy for you.
B. If you are an idiot, you can learn to enjoy doing something other than having kids.
And to be frank, if you don't want kids, the amount of effort you need to invest in remaining kid-free is near 0.
And from what I hear, one of the most useful classes you can take to get a job after completing a CS degree is Hindi.
Removing it, or the fact that it was wayward to begin with?
Add hurricanes and the fact that likewise, New Orleans is and has been sinking since it was built, the prospect of rebuilding NO in place seems like sheer idiocy.
But I guess it comes down to how many people actually want to go back. From media interviews with a lot of the refugees in Texas, a large percentage may not go back. That sort of migration complicates the decision on where/how one rebuilds NO.
And part, IMHO, of the problem is that we have a system in place which encourages the poor to stay poor. It's called a welfare system, but it is far from well.
When you doll out money to people for YEARS, without helping/forcing them to better themselves and their lives, they grow complacent. Sure, they might not be living in a sweet house in a nice neighborhood, but they are free to spend their time as they will. Some watch tv, some form gangs, do drugs, play basketball all day, sit on the corner and play an instrument (in NO) - but they don't need to better themselves to survive. They don't need to further their education, learn new skills, read something or do anything to improve their place in life. The govt makes sure they don't starve, and that they have a place to live.
It's easy to be poor and ignorant when the government doesn't discourage it. I live in rural, northern New England. Around here, people think it's INSANE that the people of NO couldn't survive for four god damn days without assistance. If we get tagged with a blizzard or a major ice storm, it's quite likely that parts of the area will be cut off for that long or longer. When that sort of weather is headed this way, people stock up on shit, and hunker down. People living in houses/apts that rely upon electricity for heat either get themselves some stand-alone heaters, or get the hell out of there. In large part it is that people around here take great pride in being self-sufficient. Another part is that a substantially lower percentage rely upon govt assistance for their daily needs than in a typical inner-city. Not that people around here aren't as poor - they just generally put a bit more effort into improving their situation in life than a lot of city-poor.
Not everybody chooses to be poor. But our current welfare system is designed to make it easy, and it does little to encourage people in the system to make improvements in their lives. I hope that this disaster will make someone, somewhere look at the underlying cause of poverty in this nation. If we can't convince the poor to learn and do new things to help them escape from poverty, perhaps it's time to force them to escape from poverty. If we continue to propagate a system where large swathes of the population are cradled by the government, we'll continue to have shit happen like this disaster in New Orleans, when the govt was gone, for just a moment.
And for fuck's sake folks, stop building below sea level, in an area plagued by hurricanes each year. It'd be one thing if New Orleans was stable, but jesus - it's FUCKING SINKING. It has been for the last few hundred years. The Netherlands can do it because they are on bedrock, and don't have hurricanes. Those things are important. Aaah, shit, I think I just ran out of rant. Adios.
You are indeed correct - however, I'm not talking (or at least thinking) about Brittany, or any of the other huge stars of the modern media. I'm talking about all those little groups, for whom a million CDs would be a huge deal.
For a grand price of nearly free, a Label could slap a half-album of moderate-bitrate mp3s into the p2p world. If nobody cared, that no-name group and label would be out nothing. If a million people did, they would sell a ton more CDs than they were going to before this exposure.
You are right - it will never compare to the big money makers - and that's why it will never happen. But if some of the minor labels (assuming there are any left now) did this, they could potentially expose obscure artists to people who might be interested. For very, very little money or effort.
If it were just me alone, no, no it wouldn't be a good example. But when a million people buy an extra CD that they normally wouldn't have purchased, it is a big deal. I'd love to see a study on the p2p effect done on a large scale, and done well. I doubt that I'm the only person who's purchased a few extra CDs due to this sort of band exposure. Had I not gotten the mp3s, I wouldn't have purchased those CDs.
If the music industry can get a few million more people to buy this way, it'd be a pretty smart business move. Much smarter than, say, suing your customers.
Oh, that's right - their artists suck ass, and need to be crammed into people's faces. Sorry for asking such a stupid question.
Note: The above scenario only works for artists with talent that people actually choose to listen to.
As a good example of this, I stopped regularly buying CDs in the late 90s, as they neared the $20 mark. Since about 2000, I have purchased a grand total of 3 CDs. One of these CDs was a new release from a band I was (formally) a big fan of, and I own most of their other CDs.
But the other two are the interesting ones - a friend uploaded me a bunch of mp3s during a lan party a few years ago. In this mix were two non-mainstream bands, Opeth and Soilwork. You can't hear them on the radio, and it's only been in the last few years that they have begun to show up in the US. (at Ozzfest)
I now own CDs from both these bands, and am considering more. But I already have the music on my computer - nicely infringed. Why would I buy more of their CDs?
*Audio quality - I can rip at the bitrate I want my music ripped at
*Album art
*To support two kickass bands which aren't trying to sound like all the rest of the music played on mainstream radio stations.
Since I missed the last few Ozzfests, and they don't get radio airtime, would I ever have found these bands otherwise? No. If it wasn't for my infringing friend (who also has started buying their albums) neither of us would have ever heard of these bands, nor dropped any money on their cds.
Infringement can be one kickass tool for exposure, and that's the part I wish the *AAs would get through their thick skulls. Why waste a zillion dollars advertising and paying off DJs, when you can release 1/3 the songs on a P2P network, and let people drive up business through word of mouth&file sharing? Even if you can't do this for your top-tier artists, there are plenty of new artists you could "test out" like this for very little money.
To really answer your question, what they (not me - I don't know crap about linux kernels, other than which one I've just upgraded to) need to know is what you'e using your computer(s) for. Are the advantages of the 2.6 kernel as listed above advantages for you?
;)
Personally, I moved from Win2k to linux (gentoo) due to instability in 3rd party software which I could get decent replacements for in linux. I generally run the lastest gentoo kernel, and haven't noticed any instability other than what my n00bishness has artificially created. Not that that helps you at all, I'm guesing.
If they don't want to rebuild *above* sea level, they can just rename it Atlantis and sell tours.
But if 25% of those projects make some major gain, that's only $20,000 a project. That's not really all that expensive, to get work done which "normally" wouldn't have gotten done, or would have taken far longer. In addition, this has been a nice bit of publicity for a lot of projects, and overall a nice community effort.
It seems like there's been a ton of communication between participants and the orgs they are working with, and that can only help everyone involved. Not to mention that there are now probably a hundred more people who will feel confident contributing (for free) to OS projects in the future, and who have the knowledge and skills to help out.
So congradulations to all who participated. I'm looking forward to being able to use all the nifty things you got to make on your summer break. Yeah, I'm jealous...
But the idiocy of this is that *households* don't use 100% of the energy in the US. If they did, great, we'd save energy.
Unfortunately, a great deal of the energy used in this country is at work. The hundreds of thousands of people who work in call centers or cube farms never touch the lights. They are on when they come in, and they are on when they leave. In fact, MANY businesses leave their lights on 24/7. If not all the time, they at least light their buildings 8am-5pm, regardless of how bright outside it is.
If it's lighter during the day, we won't use our computers any less. Our refrigerators won't run less. We'll still use AC. And our offices will still be lit by banks of fluorescent lights, heated and cooled by poorly balanced HVAC units which are further thrown off by morons with their windows open, and rooms filled by racks of inefficient computers wasting ton of energy in the form of heat.
If we really want to save energy, let's start by requiring government and military installations to have energy efficient buildings and policies, and enforce national building codes for households and businesses so they are well insulated and energy efficient. Throw in minimum fuel efficiency requirements for vehicles, and THAT would make a difference. This daylight savings extension won't do much to save energy, I'm afraid.
If I understand you correctly, I would have to disagree. While there are still problems, the amount of useful data needed is far less. Currently, if you are setting up a phone conference between CA and NY, you have to know both the time differential, AND what time both parties start and end work. In the US, there is a fair amount of flex in "normal business hours". Some places are 9am-5pm, some are 8am-4pm; out in the sticks, it's not uncommon to find places that run first shift 7am-3pm.
Rather than all the confusion, if CA emails NY and says "Call me at 1600 UTC", they can both instantly know whether or not they are in the office at 1600 UT. While CA may have hours 1600 to 0000 UTC, and NY is at the office between 1300 and 2100 UTC, both immediately know that 1600 UTC is a workable time for a conference call.
Sure, you still need to know that you can call your CA contact between 1300 and 0000, but that's LESS information than if you need to know that their office hours are 8am-5pm AND they are on a three hour differential. (and the way people in this country do math...) I think if we got rid of time zones, and businesses simply set their own local hours, it would simplify quite a lot of the stuff we do.
Plane trip from LAX to JFK - leaving LAX at 1600, arriving at JFK at 2000. It will take four hours. What time should you get to the airport in LA? 1500, so you have time to check in. What time do you need to be picked up from JFK? 20:30 - add a half hour to get off the plane and get your baggage. All this is easy. And additionally, you just need to know that NYC works from 1300 to 2100, and you'll be arriving just before the end of the work day.
As a former astronomer, UTC is far, far easier to work with than local timezones. And let me emphasize *former*, just in case I screwed my math up above. If I did, I know someone will point it out. Thanks in advance if you do.
And unless I totally misunderstood the article, "darkmail attacks" are nothing more than spam. Granted, in very large quantites, but nothing that businesses with "tempting" domains haven't been experiencing for years.
It's just that "dictionary attacks" of hundreds of thousands of to: addresses are being used on smaller domains with more frequency.
Same problem, same methods. Spammers are just casting a bigger net, as their success rates are diminishing due to filtering.
Not only is competition a wonderful thing, but I'd much rather Apple lead the way in "*nix becomes a common common on the desktop, and is therefore a target for malware, botnet attacks, and viruses". Why? Because they have the funds and marketing ability to pull through it, much like MS has done while their security has been under attack from all sides.
Linux can learn from Apple's mistakes in the "major desktop player" arena, and continue to get better, without having to be on the front lines. It will make life a little easier, and a lot less expensive for all the small-userbase distros. It's been a long time since there was a sizable non-MS distro common on the desktop, and I bet we'll be in for a lot of surprises in the near future.
My Rep voted against it. How did your reps vote?
If they voted differently than you had wished, pick up the phone tomorrow, and let them know. Tell people you meet. Do something. Don't just bitch on slashdot.
(Unless you can't vote in the US, at which point bitching is about all you can do about this latest vote.)