In 1998 my mother bought me a 'Linux' book with Red Hat 5.2 attached. Being a geek I installed it and loved it. I dabbled with upgrading it and using the Ximian beta Gnome 2. It always felt clunky though.

Then I discovered Debian. Not only did it have an AWESOME package manager, but it taught me about free software. It showed me that people can collaborate across the globe to make an integrated, high quality operating system for free. Around this time, I was finding my place in the world and I honestly think the spirit of Debian helped me discover Humanism and a concept of greater, moral good.

To this day I am in awe of this effort. Looking across its entire collection, the social structure and the individual elements (kernel, GNU toolchain, X, OpenSSH etc) I think free software is one of humanities greatest achievements. Whether you use it or not, take reflection in how awesome this completely free project is and how much it's brought us.

Thanks Debian!

The problem with what you say is that NBCs coverage was profit driven. They tape-delayed shows to ensure prime-time audiences, cut large elements out of the opening/closing ceremonies and most events were not free to watch online without a cable subscription.

Whilst the BBC and the Television License is a subject of debate in the UK, it's very narrow-minded to say the $230 USD (not $300) brings only dramas. Comedy, news, current affairs, radio, light entertainment, online streaming, education and a whole load of other content ad-free.

I haven't looked up the figures, but my bet is that the BBC channels are amongst the most popular TV and Radio offerings in the UK - people clearly seem to like what they produce (myself included, I would pay the license fee just to have Radio 4).

Cisco is presently moving to IOS-XE which is the classic IOS binary blob running under a Linux kernel, which strikes them a balance between stability/portability (Linux) and features (IOS).

Of course, it's somewhat disingenuous to describe IOS-XE as "Linux" as it's really using it as a hardware layer - more like a heavy hypervisor which can host other applications.

Universities should be havens for academic freedom and research, not a narrow corridor where IT can arbitrarily set policy.

Fortunately most universities I know (at least in the UK) respect this. They might hate having to deal with student residences (the wild west), but they prefer to generally treat students as adults and respect that the internet is far too useful as a tool to have some guy lock it down in the misguided name of security.

Which government? The internet is a global entity. What constitutes porn in one country shouldn't suddenly apply universally.

It makes sense on a mac because the operating system decouples applications and windows. In other words, you can still manipulate an application even if it has no visible windows. Close and Quit are distinct functions.

I quite like this method as well as it provides a (relatively) consistent place to aim the mouse and the expectation that all programs will behave the same way. Windows confuses me these days. Some applications have no menu bar, others have lots of icons and so on. On a mac, you can click "Help" and type what you want to do and it's there - for every application.

'd not heard of this vim before, so thought I'd give it a go on its birthday - I'm even using it to write this message!

Happy birthday!

^C^C^C^Dquit

I quit about 4 months ago after about 4 years of playing the same class/role (warrior tank). The driving factor for me was that the game had massively shifted from being huge and exciting, with a real sense of achievement, to inevitable victories and reinforcement pellets.

I used to love playing with my girlfriend, levelling and exploring the new content. We felt skillful completing raids with a group of people. We were never the best, but we worked hard and achieved our goals. Even when Wrath of the Lich King came out, it still felt epic and there was a lot of new content to explore and play.

However, now it's just a Skinner box. See here and here for great articles on this.

So, no new content, a lazy achievements system and uninspired story telling made me quit. This time, I don't think I'll ever go back.

I have the Virgin 50/5 cable service and am very happy with it.

OK, I pay well over the standard rate (£44.99 a month - ~$70 USD) but I get a genuine 48Mbit/s down and 4.5Mbit/s up. I've found their technical support to be excellent and when I used to play WoW I'd have a consistent 30-40ms latency. I run my home office via a Cisco IPSec VPN tunnel and use HD video and voice all the time with almost no issues.

When I contrast this to my BT DSL service in my old place, I was lucky to sync in at 1Mbit/s down and 500Kbit/s up. Whole weekends of sparse connectivity weren't a surprise and I got used to having to go in to the office to work on my regular "no internet" days. All over a "super fast ADSL2+ line". My experience isn't unique, anyone living in an area with ancient cables far from the exchange is stuck in this situation.

So for me at least, Virgin can take my money. It works great, I have had almost no issues and when they say 50Mbit/s I'm pretty much getting it. I'm looking at moving house next year and a genuine criteria is decent internet. Virgin cable will be a good sign for me.

The economies of scale exist elsewhere - e.g. Europe where more than half of cars are Diesel I bet.

One of the biggest downers - and the reason I haven't got one - is the noise. First thing on a cold morning they sound just awful.

It's worth noting that IL3 isn't exactly top secret - patient records (such as xray scans) are also classified as IL3.

Really top secret stuff is IL6 which has a very different set of security requirements. Whether this makes it more secure is a different matter, but don't expect diplomatic cables, submarine designs and MI6 café menus on this system.

Exactly this. I have a DAB (Digital) Radio in my car. However, I find myself using FM (or even AM) about 20-30% of the time just to get a good signal.

Problems I've had:

• No graceful degradation of quality. There are three modes - good, awful and "no signal". By 'awful' think a poorly encoded MP3 from a scratched CD downloaded in ASCII mode.
• Semi-frequent drop-outs. I read that most people listen to the radio in their cars these days. However, even sticking to the UK Motorway system, I end up with "No Signal" quite frequently, even along major routes.
• Time lag - DAB lags more than a couple of seconds behind FM, so when I'm using the 'pips' to set my watch it's off by a long way (minor grudge I guess)

In short, I'm someone who went and bought in to the DAB idea and I like some features (e.g. having 5 live and Absolute Radio available in most places not counting the above). However, I think DAB needs some serious re-thinks before it can fully replace FM. Unless you can drive the length of the country and experience the same reception and quality as FM then it shouldn't be replaced.

Any credible organisation wouldn't take too much stock on anonymous information posted on the internet. We run basic checks on potential employees and forum trolling is at the bottom of our cares.

We place too much emphasis on getting places in society. What is the actual benefit of so many people travelling to work every day? A better fix is to give tax incentives for home working and focus on technologies like better broadband, telepresence and so on. Sure, face-to-face contact will never go away and some segments of society will always have to travel to work, but I bet half the commuters on the roads in the mornings could be equally as productive at home.

English is almost entirely made up of foreign meddling - it's a peasants combination of many languages that adapts and changes with time. Very few words (except modern technical terms) have no root in a foreign language.