I know I'm late to the party, but I haven't seen anyone bring this one up yet: Real-world alarm/notification capability (pager, buzzer, a machine that goes bing, something like that)

My reasoning: I run a small IT business with various support contracts. I, and probably quite a few others, can't afford to pay someone to sit at a monitor and watch a screen (or a bunch of screens) whilst tied to a desk.

Most of the monitoring solutions (Nagios, others) are capable of off-site notification, but it's the "last yard" that's the problem--how to tell someone, even a non-techy, there's a problem so he can call in the cavalry. Despite Verizon's "largest 3G network" claim, a lot of my clients and workers in Silicon Holler don't have cell coverage...so SMS, pagers, etc. aren't all that reliable. But we do have office staff who could be around to listen for an alarm, and we have a solid internet connection...so calling for help via the network is viable, but not paying someone to be otherwise unproductive because they can't go anywhere else.

I even started developing my own ATMEGA based solution...still working on it, and I think it's completely doable. If I ever get it up and running, I'll publish the plans, code, and scripts/software under GPL and let someone else worry about the marketing.

Here, here. As someone else who works with digital forensics, I agree--it's a "touchy mistress" that has been abused all to hell in the RIAA cases. As a casual observer to the whole *IAA thing, it looks as if they were pushing sloppy, shoddy work on the court as an airtight case...and it's catching up with them.

Since the standard practices of digital forensics are fairly common, accepted, and (to techies) obvious, you would think that they would take the time to do the job right, push through those cases that cemented their reputation as solid litigators; their reputations would have preceded them, and they could have had a few big-time early successes to browbeat future defendants.

Instead, my horseback opinion is that they decided to go for quantity over quality. Judges and defendants rolled over under a wave of "techie-stuff", because it sounded good. But Media Sentry (or whatever they are calling themselves now, or whomever the RIAA is using), kept getting caught doing short-cut work, and the plaintiffs kept running with it (probably knowing it was crap.

Now, everyone is getting comfortable with terms like "forensic copying," "hashes", "ip addresses", and "p2p software." And those previous cases are looking weaker and weaker.

Sorry for the rant; as someone who works in the evidence field (and takes pride in doing it right--not fast or biased), I applaud NewYorkCountryLawyer's work on this, and I'm glad a lot of bad courtroom maneuvering is getting exposed.

[Bookmarks] -> [Bookmark This Page] -> [Done]

Australia's Secret Internet Filter: Your one-stop shopping for porn!

More of style:

• Android's Dream, by Scalzi: Lots of sub plots that tie together, but it starts out with a human ambassador giving the ruling alien ambassador a heart attack by letting off chemically-altered farts. (The aliens communicate largely by sense of smell, so he gets pissed when he smells "Your wife is screwing around on you and everyone knows it!") Also, the overarching background is an Illuminati-like religion that has two internal factions. One believes that the religion is absolutely fake, and that making the "prophecies" come true proves there is no God. The other faction believes that, despite its origins, the prophecies are inspired by God, and making the prophecies come true proves there is a God. Both sides are manipulating some alien internal politics to prove their point.
• All the Way to the Gallows by David Drake: A collection of stories (some sci-fi, some fantasy, some a mix) that make fun of sci-fi, religion, fantasy plots, cultural relativism, and a host of other set pieces of literature...
• Terry Pratchett: Pretty much the entire Discworld universe (politics, religion, magic, fantasy, etc. all taken to an illogical extreme.) The Bromeliad Trilogy, wherein what we would call Gnomes are actually tiny little aliens who've forgotten where they come from. Some believe that the department store they live in is actually the entire world...until they meet others from Outside. Then there's Good Omens which kind of shames the whole Armageddon/Ragnarok thing.
• Bolo!, a collection of Bolo stories by David Weber, does a pretty good job (imho) of working off the idealist morality of the Bolos with their human creators/operators. And Path of the Fury is pretty good at playing out the "what-if" of a Greek Fury in a sci-fi future.
• A. Lee Martinez does some good fantasy-meets-reality with his books. The Automatic Detective is about an evil genius's killer robot who just wants to be a regular citizen. Too Many Curses follows the Evil Wizard's housekeeper after the Master is eaten by his latest demon. In the Company of Ogres is, among other things, about a military soldier who never stays dead...not matter how many times people have tried. Gil's All-Fright Diner follows a couple of buddies, one of which is a vampire and the other a werewolf. The vampire falls in love with a ghost...which makes things a little..."interesting."

(Wow! I have way too much time on my hands.)

My apologies for not conducting the flame war in proper fashion, you rat bastard. :-)

I don't know enough about the authors' backgrounds to say that HE influenced them; more along the lines that, to me, they are able to pull off the same style.

I'd say this is turning into the Wesley-Iniago sword fight in Princess Bride than a real GNAA-type flame war...

Harlan Ellison contribution flame war in 3...2....1...

I'll bite: One of the best parts of Ellison's writing, to me, is how he uses hyperbole, jokes, and extreme situations to get his point across. Repent, Harlequin! is probably one of the best examples. There's also A Boy and His Dog, Jeffty Is Five, a parody I can't recall about the whole "mysterious shop that sells cursed objects", and a host of others.

Terry Pratchett, David Drake, David Weber, A. Lee Martinez, John Scalzi, and a host of other modern writers are in the same vein.

Other old-time Scifi writers did the same thing, but Ellison made it fun...and it stuck with you (or at least, me) a lot longer.

If someone really wanted to mess with them, make an auto click system that pipes through Tor somehow...causing the IP addresses to appear to come from all over the world.

I'm sure there are some technical issues, but it would make more work for Google.

*sigh* I know this is troll/flamebait, but I can't help myself....

The arguments the above post can be made about any military...not matter who in history you pick. Even good ol' King Arthur had his kniggets go out and fight battles to protect "the good and the right."

From the largest perspective, for better or worse, a military is a necessary function for a country to survive. Show me a single country with a history longer than 1 year that survived without any form of military service at all...it just doesn't happen. Humans in large groups are violent, greedy, and persnickety about others taking the things they own...meaning other groups of violent, greedy, and persnickety humans.

At the lowest level, no matter which military you pick, most guys are in for a chance to "do something," either for themselves or for their country...or both. It's only in extreme circumstances (war, basically) where you get tons of guys joining for the express purpose of kicking the crap out of the krauts/japs/commies/charlie/whatever. Even better, most people have to be trained to do the kicking. Individually, most humans just don't have it in them to go around killing people (thank goodness, I guess.)

I suppose there are "good" wars and "bad" wars as the AC's post seems to claim, but it doesn't mean that the guys doing the fighting, killing, and dying are at fault or are evil in some way. We (humans, that is) dehumanize the enemy; everyone does. AC does this, also, by implying that either the GP is either too stupid to understand his role or to evil to care...or maybe evil enough to be complicit.

Reality just isn't that simple. Probably quite a few of the Persian fighters at Thermopylae were sons of farmers who wanted to get out, see the world, and make something of themselves. Next thing you know, their fighting a bunch of mad men on a narrow road above the sea.

The old quote "My country. May she ever be right, but right or wrong, my country!" (Stephen Decatur) doesn't just apply to the US...every citizen of every nation should take up that attitude...and try to fix the things that are wrong.

[end rant...you are free to go about your usual business...]

The link in my OP is to their CAPS site--an investment "game" where you can rate whether a company is going to outperform or underperform the market. It also has space for blogs, comments, opinions, etc...plus the usual articles.

I should have been more specific in my post--you're correct, the Fool has been around for a lot longer than that.

That's one of the best reasons to be on it. I started using LinkedIn (free, not paying!) to get in touch with old colleagues; that's it, nothing more. Recommendations and invitations are for only people I absolutely know (I reject any others out of hand.)

For any social networking sites, it's the Thermodynamics of Humanity--crap and chaos will increase. AOL, Yahoo Message boards (social, financial, etc.), the garbage always builds up.

On that note, are only a few places I still follow that have stayed "fairly" clean. Joke as much as you want, but Slashdot has stayed pretty close to mission over the years. Groklaw is still pretty good. Motley Fool is still fairly new, but has hung on to it's central theme for a couple of years now.

Think of social networking sites like sex, or dating: Before you sign up, imagine that some Glenn Close nutjob is going to hunt you down and kill your pets, or some pimply teenager is going to show up on your door step 16 years from now at the family reunion shouting, "Dad! Mama tol' me you owed us for that fling all those years ago!"

If those kinds of problems are foreseeable, don't use the sites.

The GPL license includes some restrictions on use and redistribution (if don't want it to remain free to all, you could use the BSD license..(IANAL, all the rest, so this is only my personal understanding.)

Being a usual /.er, I haven't read the article, but it sounds like you're talking about a protocol layout--a communication schema. In that case, talking to the IP lawyer would be a good way to go. However, in dealing with the lawyer, don't let them decide "the plan"--you should lay out your plan, and say "Can you make this happen?"

My suggestion for "The Plan" is this:

• Have the protocol sponsored/supported by your company.
• License under the GPL so that it can be used free of cost, with appropriate credit for the original coding.
• Have the reference or baseline code hosted online, freely available (your own servers [big company investment] or at Sourceforge.net

that leaves a few questions for the IP attorney:

• Do we need a patent?
• Patent or not, what steps to enforce the license will be required?
• How much will this cost the company--best/worst case?

Details like community involvement; retaining the project as a company project only or not; taking donations or "selling"; etc. will come later. None of these are new questions; you might want to talk to some big OSS project administrators to see how their choices are working.

Good luck! It sounds like a lot of fun to be involved in.

I haven't seen anyone else post about using mythological names/creatures.

since I'm partial to Norse mythology, I tend to use gods and characters from there. When I run out (or there's not a good fit) I use Greek.

• Fenris = firewall
• Hermod = mail server (Norse messenger..also called hermor)
• Grendel = any big monster machine with horsepower (usually an app or terminal server)
• Argus (greek) = database or main file server (has the golden fleece)
• Odin = my machine/laptop--development and admin.

I do IT for a medical practice. What we ended up with was a central server running Fedora and LTS, with thin clients in each of the exam rooms and in the doctor's office.

This had all the benefits of getting the records available in each room without having to go through individual updates. There are still fat clients/full workstations in the office, but those are primarily for the other work--office manager, accounting, etc.

since each grade level is different (different lessons, different requirements), I would suggest having a server either for each classroom, grade level, or department. For example, your math classes would need different software (and access) than your English class. You could even set up your foreign-language classes to have the locale set to the language they teach--the kids would have to learn French, Spanish, Russian, etc to use the computers...and the casual contact with that language would reinforce the lessons.

True, you would lose some of the benefits of "one admin to rule them all," but the software and changes would be compartmentalized--and the Computer instructors could even have more free reign to fix (or damage) their systems as they see fit.

To be honest, I did vote for a Republican representative...mostly because the Democratic incumbent had voted for telecom immunity.

Why would you assume I voted a straight party ticket either way?

No, I didn't. I was in the military during the run-up to Iraq, and had been warning my friends (military and civilian) of the possible extremes that the GOP Congress and administration would go to.

Sadly, imho, most of the bad possibilities came true.

The reason I mentioned my party affiliation (soon to be past; I'm going to register independent) was because party "loyalty" is not high on my list...actually, it's not on the list at all. Lesser of two evils is good enough for me; if one candidate is either more agreeable to my positions or a good antidote to the current doofus, he'll probably get my vote.

Obama was (to me) a good repudiation of the former administration's belief and tactics...it remains to be seen if he's any good at all on his own.