This has been *progressing*?

This is possibly the stupidest idea in history. Their stated goal: taking complexity out of time handling code -- *cannot happen*: it will *still* have to account for all the years we did this.

And it will break *lots* of stuff.

about when it said that the 3.0 Linux kernel release was "merely Linus' preference"; it wasn't. While the code didn't rev, the *kernel release practice did*, and it justified the new version number, even to me--and I'm the one who codified traditional version numbering practice in the Wikipedia article of the same name. It's stuck for 2 years now, so I assume I interpreted it properly. :-)

That said, Ars is wrong here, and so's Mozilla: I *was* IT guy, and had 500 seats to deal with, and they'd be pissing me right off if I was still in that position. I can think of no better way to chase medium to enterprise businesses away than to say "we don't give a fuck about you and your problems"... and that market is probably 30-40% of their marketshare.

Owel; someone will tell them "Oh yeah? Well, fork you!", and the problem will go away.

Because allowing the Skype PtP client on to office computers makes them insecure, and probably uncontrollably violates the Congress firewalls in the process.

Morons.

And the *best* part of trolling slashdot is watching *nobody* get the right answer.

I didn't have it either, of course, but that's not important right now. Courtesy of a gent on NANOG with better google-fu than me:

http://www.nerc.com/page.php?cid=6|386

and

http://www.nerc.com/files/NERC_TEC_Field_Trial_Webinar_061411.pdf

Ok, this one wins the prize for smart-ass comeback.

Damn, but I'd forgotten how much fun it was to troll Slashdot.

In fact, my real problem was that a) the new release was so mangled by AP that it was impossible to see what they were *really* trying to do, and b) 2 weeks notice is a bit short.

And, FWIW, I've paid attention to the power grid for considerably longer than 5 minutes. Just not at that level of detail.

Those of us who know and care -- and I don't mean me, I mean people like Dr Rebecca Mercuri, whose postgrad work has been right on this point -- have been trying to get that to happen since, oh, at least 1996 or so.

You can see the (total lack of) results, right?

Clearly, whomever thought this was a Pretty Neat Idea hasn't read this:

http://yarchive.net/car/rv/generator_synchronization.html

and doesn't understand what happens when you're even a bunch of *degrees* out of sync, much less a few decihertz. We don't have *near* enough HVDC intertie to make this not matter, and I can't imaging how they think this is gonna work -- nothing at all on NERC's website to say what's *really* gonna happen, either.

Love all the warning, too.

And I think it's time to take away Samzenpus's keys, for letting that summary out.

The summary is -- as is so often the case, but I really would expect better here -- not only wrong, but *exactly wrong*.

It is Pessimal.

Why is it "interesting" that they achieved saturation with *3/4 of the adult humans in the US*?

That's a pretty damned impressive number...

Since after the EMP bombs all go off, no one's eReaders are gonna be working all that well anymore.

Doesn't *anyone* read science fiction anymore?

You people just aren't *near* paranoid enough.

David... it's just that -- just as with everything *else* important over the last 3 decade (SCADA security, anyone), *no one important is listening to us*.

Good think we like saying atojiso.

And to reply to Cringley's comments on identity theft, if everyone put their foot down and *forced service providers to stop using unchangeable, researchable authenticators like SSNs and Maiden names, all of that problem would dry up in a heart beat.

"Press hard, you are making 6 million copies."

Naw; Godwin's Law concerns *comparisons* to Hitler and Nazis. If you're *actually talking about them for a reason*, it trips out, to avoid a recursive black hole in the fabric of the Universe.

ILS receiver antennas aren't "hidden inside the passenger compartment".

They're "attached to the outside of the friggin airframe".

Any story that gets the details that wrong, that fast, receives no credence at all. And if airplanes are having this much trouble with my 2mw iPad, what the *hell* are they doing about getting hit by 2GW of lightning?

(And don't tell me "Faraday cage"; that protects the occupants, but not necessarily the things connected to antennas outside the cage.)