ok I just checked - it costs $50 in the US according to amazon. Amazing value!

Yes - TP-LINK do. Currently $50 at amazon.

I'd never heard of them until getting this model a while back. Plus it looks like something designed by the people responsible for Knight Rider (I like it, but apparently routers are also fashion accessories nowadays), but it's a really good unit.

How about the TP-LINK WR1043. Costing equivalent of $80USD here in NZ, probably cheaper in US, I didn't look.

I got one recently when I was looking at ways to manage per-user data usage quotas at home. I have a lodger who is hammering my meager 40gb monthly allowance and with the gargoyle firmware I can throttle or kick him off the LAN when quota is exceeded. This firmware is based on openwrt I believe.

I was running tomato on WRT54-GL before this, but lack of gigabit ethernet was another motivation for me to switch up.

I have a pi and this would be a useful project for me (in need of a new router)

But I'm keen to know how feasible it really is. As poster says below, the spec isn't great and even now I'm getting frequent ethernet dropouts on my openelec install (I haven't looked into this yet, so I dunno if it's software or power supply-related).

Any real world experience out there using pi as a SOHO router?

Hey guys - we live in a global capitalist economy, what else do you expect?!

These are money-making enterprises, and they can and will do everything in their power to squeeze as much money out of us poor consumers. I actually don't have a problem with this, even though I'm politically on the left - it's the flip-side of being able to have cheap shoes and clothes imported from China, and so I can buy cheap consumer electronics.

What always interests me is exactly how consumer sovereignty gets lost from this debate. We don't HAVE to watch these movies, and we don't HAVE to take up cable subscriptions. Without us voluntarily handing over our hard-earned money these corporations are NOTHING. If they can screw the consumer and the consumer keeps paying, what incentive is there for them to stop? Vote with your wallets!

I think most people would agree that any democratic system should represent small factions and minorities - that's exactly what it should do, represent its electorate.

PR is clearly better placed to do this than some other systems currently being used. Where 'small kooky factions' hold disproportionate power, it's more likely to be a problem with the way PR is implemented and regulated rather than with the system itself. It's not one-size-fits-all, and each jurisdiction should think carefully about how the thing is put together.

I'd also like to point out the potential normative bias in your claim that these factions are 'kooky'. You may not sympathise with their beliefs, but does that mean they shouldn't be represented in parliament, or they should have less influence?

Maybe it would just be better if the party who shares your personal views exactly has all the power??

Yes the system is NZ is bascially the same as in Germany - Mixed member proportional representation. The only other countries using it are Hungary and Lesotho according to the wikipedia page. While it has been rather controversial here, in practical terms it really has given greater profile to smaller parties and minority interests -- without turning parliament into a black hole of inactivity. Several pieces of dubious legislation have been diluted or ditched because of this system.

YMMV of course - NZ has no upper house, so without this system any party with a majority in parliament can basically do what the fuck it likes.

ya the code snippet provided in parent post indicates to me that this was something forced upon a level-headed coder by some moronic middle manager.

I heard a rumour that once upon a time, wars were started for even more specious reasons like - to liberate an oppressed and downtrodden populace, or EVEN to provide regional geo-political stability.

Imagine that!

maybe not - but at least they tried.

1. Social security? If you live in a country where your retirement is entirely paid for by government, please let me know where it is - I'd like to move there.

2. Believe it or not, 'social security' is not a magical rainbow fairy whirlpool where money just appears. It needs ... money. Money which is usually generated through general taxation or some kind of contribution scheme. Where does this money come from? People who work.

Even in your utopia, the ability of your government to support you and your 'social security' in retirement is directly correlated with the number of people working in the economy and paying taxes. When you're old, those people will be - guess what? - other people's children.

Please make sure you thank them for indulging in their emotional/psychological need so you can retire in comfort.

Very timely piece, following on from the Slate bio of Aron Swartz and O'Reilly's decision to make 'Open government' free for download.

I've just finished reading the first few chapters of that book and i have to say it really blew my mind. I work in a quasi-IT role in a public sector health organisation; it's really amazing to me how difficult everyone makes it all out to be. Our IT systems are cobbled together from a range of hugely expensive 3rd party solutions - none of which inter-operate and all of which require a change request, 6 months of paperwork and a cheque for at least $50k to make very minor modifications. As it says in 'Open government', there is now an expectation that any solution involving computers or data has to be hugely expensive and time-consuming.

So, I'm really inspired by this story. It says to me that a bit of openness and thinking outside the box is a Good Thing. I'm submitting a paper soon recommending that we develop a strategy moving towards more open platforms and, yes, even merge our IS and HR thinking to do something like competitions and code-outs to get the community and CS enthusiasts working on real world problems.

This begs the question - why is there so little of this thinking currently in the public sector?? Maybe that's a debate for another day!

thank you.

I'm out of mod points, regrettably.

Bingo!

And if the banks stuck to doing what they're supposed to do, the two things you describe above, instead of playing around with collateralised debt obligation, derivatives, and nuclear warhead testing for all I know, we wouldn't be in this fucking mess.

Precisely! I'm personally much more interested in 'legal' logging - that is, those big businesses who get government permits and official sanction to deforest at will, and make shit loads of money in the process. None of this would fall under the purview of such a scheme, since it is 'legal', but almost certainly more destructive on a regional or global scale.

Would be interested in seeing some figures on estimated volumes of 'illegal' logging versus officially sanctioned 'legal' logging. Anyone?