I think this is a very important point that lots of people overlook.

By prescribing the use of various character classes, you are actually weakening the password.

A proper password should allow the use of those classes, but not prescribe them.

When I was a kid, we had a game called "Mastermind". One person selected various coloured buttons and hid them behind a screen. The other person had to guess the colours / sequence.

We had various house rules about difficulty levels. One of the easiest ones was if they had to tell you the pattern. eg:
* double colour
* blank
etc

Same thing with passwords

Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but wasn't the basis of the BSD ruling that API's weren't copyrightable???

The seatbelt sign is totally irrelevant to this.

It *wasn't* on "on the off chance we need to take evasive action" It was purely coincidental. The sign may have helped reduce the number of injuries, but that's about it.

Now if they were hurt because of turbulence or something, well that is a different scenario.

PS We flew Air Canada (to Canada of all places) from Australia recently. We spent an inordinate amount of time with the seatbelt sign on. It really wasn't that rough. When you have the sign on too long, well people just *have* to get up and about for various reasons. It is going to happen.

Well both Teamviewer and Skype work fine under Linux.

I use them both with no issues.

If that's all you want, you should be pretty right.

Well if you are planning to telecommute, it would be expected that your company has systems and procedures in place for this. What are they.

Even within the Windows world, not everyone has all their work professional software at home. So they will have methods for you to obtain /
access it as required.
In general there are probably two directions they may have gone.

1) It's a generic communication type job. You'll probably need email, calendaring, instant messaging, video conferencing, generic web applications (wiki / CRM etc)
2) Technical job that requires professional software.

In the case of 1. Linux can probably handle most of your needs trivially.
Email.
There are any number of clients. Your company will probably have IMAP set up, maybe over a VPN. Pretty much all the email clients do IMAP. There are also MS Exchange plugins available for various clients
Calendaring
Similarly there are various options. Including DavMail / Exchange plugins

IM
There are plenty of options here as well. Skype is popular. It works on Linux. I use it on a regular basis.
Video conferencing
May depend on your company's systems. Again if they allow this type of thing , they will have systems. It it's Skype, well that works. Video conferencing tends to be somewhat vendor specific. So if you need to talk to clients, the company will probably have / use generic / standards compliant software so that it works for everyone.

Web application
Should Just Work (TM). Unless they are particularly badly written

In the case of 2. They will either provide copies of the professional software to use at home, or there will be some form of remote access system.
Linux can handle RDP, Citrix, Teamviewer, VNC etc

I now work in a Windows shop, but have had a Linux desktop since last Millennium some time. It is a pretty trivial task to work from home.

Actually I can do a bunch of my work from my Android tablet if I desire. That's how trivial this stuff is now days (and has been for quite a while in reality)

I've never had any issues with either.

I use Teamviewer all the time. It Just Works (TM) Both version 6 and 7. I can't imagine what you're doing wrong. It really was a trivial exercise to download / install and run.

Similarly Skype Just Works (TM) I've never noticed any issues with CPU usage.

My biggest problem with this oft-cited logic is that:
a) It takes considerable effort to "tail a guy". You really want to know what "he's" up to. vs the electronic version that is virtually "free".

b) You can't retrospectively "tail a guy" in real life.

c) The real life situation has boundaries. You can't follow them in private settings, not so the electronic version.

d) The "target" of the surveillance has the opportunity to observe the "observation". Remember, they are innocent till proven guilty in most parts of the world. I'm really concerned that that is / has changing.

Just because there are *some* similarities between two situations, doesn't make them the same.

He may have to wait a bit to try for the Senate.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Australian_federal_election it must by held by 30 November 2013. Whilst there is *some* possibility of it being called early, I wouldn't be holding my breath.

Of course the planet has been hotter / colder than now, but that's not really relevant. The climate scientists have been able to link / model the changes this time and a significant factor is the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere. Also, from my personal point of view, the rate of change is very significant. "Natural" climate change tends to be very slow, what we are experiencing now isn't.

Yes the majority will survive the (direct) effects of climate change. But that's not the point. It will cost us a "shed load" of money to adapt, move our cities / agricultural locations etc. from where they are now to wherever they need to go. That is the main point

There will also be conflicts over land / resources. You used to be sitting on a great bit of agricultural land, now it's a desert, or under water. Or your major city no longer has a water supply. That's the problem we face.

According to TFS they *didn't* jam the GPS signal. Otherwise it may well have switched over to another method.

The TFS says they SPOOFED the GPS signal to say what they wanted it to say. Big difference ...

Now I *thought* that GPS (at least the military version) was encrypted. If so, this would have significant implications as it would mean that they have the encryption key. And if it *isn't* encrypted, why the hell isn't it. That's just the first rule, never trust your inputs.

You are the second person in this thread to try and claim that rural people won't see any benefit. The NBN is to provide AT LEAST 12/1 speeds to 100% of the country (at the same (wholesale) price for all). Those in towns of less than 1,000 may not get fibre, but they will get high speed fixed wireless or satellite. Those who are on the dodgy ADSL / 3G will definitely see a benefit, possibly by an order of magnitude.

As the average Australian download speed is ~8.5Mb/sec down and 1.28Mb/sec up (according to Netindex), even the SLOWEST NBN speed of 12/1 will be a 25% improvement for most people. Don't forget that there are speeds up to 100/40 for now and those speeds will be increased over time.

There will be very few people in Australia who won't get an improvement in download speed and virtually everyone will be able to get massively higher UPLOAD speeds.

I'm not sure what you mean by the "price float". In Australia, virtually all of the price movements in ADSL (or even 3G) over the past 5 or more years have been downwards. There have been new plans with larger quotas from time to time that do cost more, but noone is forcing you to move to them. (I've always been able to stay on my current plan if the new ones didn't suit for whatever reason)

The NBN is a highly political topic in Australia. The opposition leader blames it for loosing him the last election (probably right too). He hates it with a passion. He appointed Malcolm Turnbull to "destroy the NBN". A job he has been working on ever since. There have been many lies and much FUD spread by them and their sock puppets (particularly their propaganda wing, "The Australian")

This is a fairly typical example:

If this person actually had a clue, they would know that the NBN is "off budget". It isn't being paid for out of taxpayer dollars. It is being funded by Government bonds. So there is NO MONEY TO GIVE BACK TO TAXPAYERS. But this is a favourite lie they like to peddle. As well as it not actually costing tax payers anything in the long run it will actually make a modest profit (~7% IRR)

The "appeasing country based MPs" is also pure BS. The NBN was planned and under way well before the country based MPs held the balance of power. It's just that they have all realised how beneficial it will be to the country and it was one of the reasons they chose to back the Government, rather than the Opposition (hence their hatred of it).

Another part of the FUD is that the actual budget is $36B, but they love to round it up to $40B or $50B or even $60B.

To put the price tag into perspective, even if it were to come out of the budget, it would be less than 1%!!! For such a significant national infrastructure item that will last for decades to come, that's pretty small bickies.

Sorry, what are you talking about??

The N in NBN is for NATIONAL. The plan is for 93% fibre, 4% wireless 3% satellite with at least 12/1 speeds available on all mediums. The fibre is to go down to towns of 1,000 premises, sometimes smaller if the fibre is going through town anyway. Those on wireless will basically be those currently on the outer edges of ADSL or beyond. Those on satellite will be truly rural.

The NBN are planning plenty of backhaul to their POIs. Congestion isn't going to be an issue within the NBN. Your ISP (now known as RSP), well that *could* be a different story, especially if you go with one of the cheep and cheerful providers.

You do realise that NBN Co is only offering a Layer 2 service. It's the ISP (now RSP) that offers the higher level services. I realise you*could* do some deep packet inspection stuff from their end, but as I understand it, it would not be at all practical at this scale.

Now if you tinfoil hat is wound on so tight you are too scared of the NBN to use it, what do you use for your connectivity now? A Telstra copper connection (weather it is from them or another ISP), just like the vast majority of Australians do now? How is that different to the vast majority of people going over the NBN infrastructure?

Your sig is remarkably apt for this story ...