Well, my WRT54G maxed out at 30Mb down/10Mb up. Given I have 62/15 service, I was severely bottlenecked by my router. Also, it doesn't have wireless N or 5Ghz, so my wireless transfer rates were capped at about 8-12Mbit. My new RT-N66U has far more range (at default power levels) than the WRT54G does, even at boosted power levels. I use my router for a VPN server, and the 200Mhz processor in the WRT54G was really struggling at that.

In general, I agree with you--I keep devices for a very long time to be environmentally friendly. I still use my WRT54G's as wireless bridges. But there is a reason to upgrade your router if you have tangible needs for the additional speed/range. Especially one from 2002.

Tomato isn't dead... The main site isn't being updated--the devs either don't have access or don't update the site.

The two main branches of Tomato are:
Toastman: (What I use) http://www.4shared.com/dir/v1BuINP3/Toastman_Builds.html#dir=zBnbpdpY
Shibby: http://tomato.groov.pl/

I've been using Toastman tomato on a WNR3500Lv1 and a ASUS RT-N66U for months now. If you're going to get a new router, I'd strongly recommend the RT-N66U, because the WNR3500L has a v2 which is totally different hardware. In addition, the RT-N66U is very fast, stable (never crashed), nearly impossible to brick and is dual-band. The RT-N66U is $170, and it's been worth every penny. Signal output is very strong--I can pick up my internet in my neighbor's house, without adjusting transmitter output power. In addition, the devs appear to use the RT-N66U's personally, so it has the most testing.

Tomato has been rock solid, stable, and an excellent daily driver for me for the last 5 years or so. I strongly recommend it, and my friends and neighbors use it and have been very happy with it. Do update to Toastman or Shibby--they're doing an excellent job fixing issues and keeping things current.

I still use my WRT54G's as wireless bridges throughout my house, but they do show performance issues when I go above 10MBps Upload/30MB Download.

Me too. Unfortunately, they only work on dogs, cats, birds, lizards, and the like.

Standard of care is better than any hospital I've been in, though...

For a business computer, it's not stupid at all. In fact, I have a customer who did just that--not because they were too poor to afford Windows 7, but because they didn't want any chance of a hack or intrusion, as they deal with customer data.

So we created an airgapped network. See: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3674549&cid=43520493

Companies that want additional security but don't want to spend $10,000+ on a new system is a different problem from poor people who can't afford new computers. For some poor people, I have switched a few to Linux. But I can't switch a proprietary system that's no longer supported by the original vendor and tied to a specific piece of $10,000+ hardware to Linux. It only runs under Windows ME and XP.

I suppose I could tell them to throw the system out and buy a new $10k-20k Ultrasound system, but given the volumes they do, they'd have to raise the cost of their ultrasounds by $150-$300 to cover the cost of the hardware. That would affect poor people...

As a small business consultant who has run into this problem a number of times, as you said, airgapping doesn't always work. However, I have one customer who is security conscious and would rather alter his way of doing business than expose customer data and infrastructure to viruses.

Two separate networks run on two separate switches (yes, VLAN's could have been used, but the switches didn't support them). Each port in the building can be configured to the internal or external network. Wireless is only available on the external network.

To this end:
1) The ultrasound computer is airgapped because it's running Windows XP. Specifically, the software for the US machine is very old and only runs on XP, and upgrading would be a $10,000+ purchase (new US machine, not just the software cost).

2) The records keeping and accounting is separate from the internet. Customer records are only available on the internal network, and not connected directly to the internet. These computers are thin clients with USB mass storage support disabled.

3) The internet computer is a disposable kiosk computer, which has no access to customer records. If someone wants to look something up (ie. rare disease), that computer is available for that. It's also accessible for emails.

This has worked remarkably well. In the (extremely rare) event that an US picture needs to be emailed, the US computer is briefly connected to the internet behind a NAT firewall. We've had zero viruses or known intrusions on the internal network in 10 years.

The doctors at this office are accustomed to the inconveniences that this brings, but they work around those issues. They did business for over 30 years with paper records, and they see no need to switch. The idea that some sensitive data gets leaked or hacked is more important than the minor efficiency gains they could achieve. However, this is a rare case. Most of my customers demand all their computers be internet-connected.

Sociology study after study shows that there is significant racial bias in the police force against blacks. Minorities are more likely to get charged with crimes, arrested, and pulled over for committing the same traffic infraction as compared to whites.[1] This bias exists and is real. This is a significant portion of the story.

The other significant portion of the story is that blacks are far more impoverished than whites, on average. " In 2010, 27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were poor, compared to 9.9 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 12.1 percent of Asians." [2] Poverty has a strong correlation to violent crime and drug use. "Nonviolent drug offenders now account for about one-fourth of all inmates in the United States, up from less than 10 percent in 1980. " [3] This figure does not include crimes which are committed to support a drug addiction.

Interestingly, violent crime rates are similar in impoverished black and white neighborhoods. "The violent crime rate in highly disadvantaged Black areas was 22 per 1,000 residents, not much different from the 20 per 1,000 rate in similar white communities." [4] This means that despite the proven police bias, for violent crimes, only 2 per 1000 more blacks are convicted of violent crimes as compared to whites in impoverished neighborhoods.

In summary... 50 years after Martin Luther King, Jr., we still have significant racial bias in American Culture. However, we have come a long way as compared to even 25 years ago. As we continue to improve as a nation, and treat others not based on their racial makeup, I believe the poverty inequality will begin to equalize in this nation. We still have a big problem with racism in the US. The racism issue is slowly improving, but there are practical and non-racist reasons why the incarceration rates differ so dramatically between whites and blacks. You don't enslave a population of people for hundreds of years and then turn around, snap your fingers, and suddenly have racial, economic, financial, and social equality. Repairing the damage that was done takes time. Now if our prison system could be more interested in healing instead of retribution...



Interesting Note: There is growing evidence that Lead is the cause of the majority of the violent crime. [5] If this is true, this may explain why the violent crime rates are similar--impoverished people are more likely to be exposed to lead, but impoverished blacks are just as likely to be exposed as whites.

[1] http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/08/09/blacks-hispanics-still-more-likely-to-get-traffic-tickets-in-illinois/ [2] http://www.npc.umich.edu/poverty/
[3] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/269208/prison-math-and-war-drugs-veronique-de-rugy
[4] http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/badcomm.htm
[5] http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

If you're a good developer, why not just find a company with good benefits and respects their employees? There's a huge competition for good programmers in the market right now and there are many companies looking.

I currently work for a company that starts at 20 days PTO and maxes out at 30 days with enough seniority. No union. Respects its employees. Located in Michigan, so not "required by law" to treat its employees like the AC grandparent. As a manager, I recently advised one of my employees to take more PTO days together as a vacation, instead of taking them one day at a time--not by law, but because I felt it would be better for him.

Heck, if you live in or near Windsor, you might be able to commute to work. Drop me an email at Lothsahn at yahoo if you're interested.

Short answer: Flip burgers? Life's gonna be tough. Have skills in this market, especially programming ones and live in the US? You have options, even though you're not "1%". Start looking.

Actually, Korea, Vietnam, Libya, and Afghanistan have proved that an armed populace can be an effective weapon against such a government. On a domestic front, Christopher Dorner proved the same thing just recently, as he single-handely killed 4 and injured 3, many of which were armed police.

If one person can do such a thing, an entire armed populace IS something to fear. Of course, arming a populace has other downsides (Adam Lanza, etc).

...or you could just go work for a company where they're reasonable. I've negotiated two changes to my employment agreement with my current company. One was before hiring on, and one was after. In both cases, I felt the original conditions of the employment agreement were reasonable, but in my certain circumstance I needed them changed. The company, seeing my (reasonable) requests, was happy to honor them.

Now, if you're working at (insert huge company here that's too large, cumbersome, and inefficient to be reasonable), then I suppose a lawyer might be in order... But I would say it's probably better to negotiate first (privately consulting with a lawyer, if necessary) rather than look like you're lawyer-happy. I could definitely see some people getting scared off at the first mention of lawyers.

Just my 2c...

But... that was DRM, and you just proved my point. Because you didn't have a valid license key, you couldn't receive software updates, join public servers, and you were getting nagged that you hadn't bought the software. That is an example of well-implemented DRM.

This is similar to the DRM that I was advocating in my post. In fact, the article I linked above, talks about Captain Hector, who's described in this link:
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/support/faqs/products/escape-velocity/Does-Captain-Hector-serve-any-real-purpose

Just like Minecraft, the DRM doesn't prevent you from playing the game if you don't pay. If the payment servers are down, you can still play for a while. However, over the next few weeks, it slowly nags you more and more aggressively until you pony up. Once you do activate the game, it's activated forever and doesn't require the internet to play. This is stronger DRM than Mojang had in Minecraft, but I consider it very acceptable. It's NOTHING like "If our activation servers aren't available right now, you can't play your game (SimCity)."

I buy games with the above (acceptable) DRM, which means that Steam, Stardock, Mojang, and Ambrosia software are all companies I would purchase from. I will not be purchasing SimCity.

Stardock's stance on DRM (and software return/quality policies):
http://www.gamepolitics.com/2008/08/29/stardock-releases-gamer039s-bill-rights-pax#.UQhQT2eS98E

For certain types of DRM, I would agree with you. For instance, if you're some random company that's developing a city building game and your users are unable to login for THREE HOURS and require an ALWAYS ONLINE connection for an OBVIOUSLY OFFLINE game, I think you have an argument that it's going to hurt sales. A lot.

On the other hand, DRM does have a positive impact on sales when implemented reasonably. For a well written article on how it helps, see here: http://www.windowsusers.org/piracy.html

From the article:
"Besides, the mantra kept repeating in our heads: five times as many registrations, five times, five times. I don’t think it ever was quite that good for us, but we definitely saw an increase in sales that helped Ambrosia weather some tough times."

So there are companies out there with "reasonable" (as defined by most users) DRM schemes such as Steam and Ambrosia software. This DRM prevents casual sharing but doesn't impact paying end users excessively. In those cases, DRM is a positive thing for sales. In Ambrosia's case, it may have prevent bankrupcy, which would have been bad not just for Ambrosia, but also for its paying customers (bankrupt companies cannot provide support).

I realize that Tomcat on windows is pretty rare, but at our company we have hundreds of Windows-based Tomcat deployments. They work just fine and perform roughly equivalent to their Linux counterparts (within a few %).

Jonah,

See my post here: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3384553&cid=42600051

We're looking for people in the local area. No redirects, false postings, etc. Livonia, MI. Not a recruiter--I work at the company and I know we have open positions.

TheGratefulNet,

I work for a great company in the Detroit, Michigan area. We are and have been hiring people who are like you--people who build stuff and get things done. Innovative? Awesome. Went and build your own hardware project? Awesome. I hired a guy a couple years who did just that, because his hardware project impressed me so much.

Age doesn't deter us--we have plenty of people your age and older (and plenty younger too). I've been a developer with the company for a number of years and I really love the place.

Feel free to drop me an email. I can absolutely make sure your resume isn't "lost in a stack". Lothsahn at yahoo

Tomato may also be affected. See my post here:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3381865&cid=42588997

We won't know until full disclosure.