The 'spectrum' or bandwidth of the Internet is virtually unlimited though. You just need to put in bigger pipes and even the smallest of the pipes you can currently get at an IX (1Gbps) can easily carry 1000 simultaneous viewers.

The ISP's only have exclusive rights to the last mile because we (the people) let them. For the most part, "the people" paid over and over again for this last mile as well as all the other miles (both phone and cable) through regulatory fees but either is being monopolized by a single provider. There is no technical reason that several providers couldn't offer you the 'last mile' connection. It's being done in several European countries where you have a pick of providers to offer you the last mile.

Except that all the predictions of Global Warming (Climate Change) made at the beginning haven't even come close to actually coming true. No rise in temperature, no extreme weather, no increased hurricanes, tornadoes etc.

Science is about reproducibility, and for all the "Sky is falling" cries being made, and hockey stick manipulations to amplify their points, to drowning polar bears.... I've seen the "science" and it isn't science, except that the hypothesis' haven't been verified. The ONLY thing I'll agree to is that CO2 is increasing, and Ocean Acidification, neither of which equate to "global warming". There are good reasons for this (H2O vapor is also Greenhouse gas) that haven't been accounted for.

FYI, IPCC is using the same flawed data from the UEA scandal. Just because you change the alphabet letters doesn't mean the scandal has gone away.

The rejections you got may not have been because you didn't know a specific answer to a very technical question.

Something I've come across in the past is something similar. It's not knowing the specific answer. Sometimes it's knowing what specific answer *they* want.

For example, "How can you change the IP on a current RHEL or CentOS box".

There are a bunch of right answers.

• edit the appropriate /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth* file.
• system-config-network
• /usr/sbin/system-config-network
• use ifconfig directly (not durable through a reboot, but ...)
• change the static entry on the dhcp server for that network interface
• modify it in cfengine, and wait for it to update.

... and those could all be wrong. That particular shop may say "We don't trust ifcfg-eth*", "system-config-network mangles the file format", or even "we don't use those files, we use /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1, that the old admin 10 years ago wrote". It could even start with "fill out the production change review forms, and submit them to the change review committee".

Some places insist that you use the full path to scripts, in case someone else put one farther up in your path (like /bin/). Some don't allow sbin to be in the user's path at all. And of course, if you failed to say "use sudo", you're one of those renegade admins who thinks they can run commands as root. Not knowing *their* method, even though you've never worked for them, is enough to fail an interview.

When I've been interviewing people, I don't work from a hard set of answers. If the interviewee comes close enough, they got it right. If they gave the "system-config-network" answer, I'd just ask "Do you know what files that modifies related to IPs?"

I've interviewed with Google a few times. One of the questions they asked was "How does telnet work?" I answered, and the interviewer asked me the question again. I gave the brief description, the detailed description, all the way down to the opening of sockets and how TCP works. Finally I just had to tell him, "I'm not sure what you're looking for in the answer. Can you please clarify the question?" He didn't. I don't know if that was a pass, fail, or just a stress question.

All taxes are regressive. The rich (and Corporations) will spend money to avoid paying taxes, leaving those that can't to pay the lion's share. There is no way to avoid this scenario, because taxes are punitive in function (e.g. Alcohol, tobacco etc) if not in practice. And while I agree that we need some form of taxes, they should be voluntary contractual agreements between Citizens and the government.

Unfortunately, the government doesn't really care about citizens, which is why our tax system is so screwed up, and why Political leaders are willing to screw it up more to get elected.

The easiest solution is to tax the velocity of money. Similar to VAT tax, but applies to all monetary exchanges of all types, from bank transfers to buy a house. The lone exception would be all cash (real greenback) transactions. Every Month, banking institutions would send an IRS statement, for each person to write a check on the transactions they incurred. It would be easy, clean and affect everyone, yet be completely easy, transparent and as taxes go up, people notice.

I started to hate ________, and I didn't want to. I did __________ (unrelated thing) for a few years to recharge. I miss it, and have been working to catch up on the last six years.

That is my exact story. I've been doing IT for 30+ years, and there is a six year (yup) period when I sold cars. People SHOULD take time off, or risk burning out. I'd rather have someone who took time off, than someone that is on the verge of burning out.

The hacker nature starts when a kid is six years old and takes apart a bicycle (or whatever). This is where the dad takes the kid and makes him put it back together. And then takes the bike apart, and does it again, only this time, letting the kid "modify" the bike. Hacker Nature is often drilled out (WTF are you doing, hope your happy, have fun not riding your bike because I am not helping you fix it) of kids by parents who are too busy to encourage it. I've seen plenty of parents ruin their kids with attitudes of "no".

That remains to be seen, actually...

In other words, before tenure they are simply like everybody else in the real world. In industry (as opposed to academia), you are always on the knife's edge of being terminated. Some employers more so than others I'll grant, but I fail to see how it is any worse.

Mind you, I've played the academia game too. The pecking order in academia is more being at a very prestigious position or university as opposed to working at a state college/university and perhaps if you can't cut it you end up teaching at a community/junior college. Sometimes people don't want to play the game so they simply stick to that junior college where they can teach rather than fighting the publish or perish mentality.... or move onto even a high school where somebody with a PhD is treated with respect and not horrible pay (although perhaps less than a university although they will earn more than somebody with a BS). My 7th Grade English teacher had a PhD, and stuck around because he loved to teach kids in middle school even though he was offered a professorship elsewhere. He even published academic papers based on stuff he was doing in the classroom. There is nothing equivalent to that kind of system in private industry.

Because maintaining the status quo without innovating has worked out well for the consumers (eg. TI calculators)? Because what we need now is what we need in the future is for ISP's only?

You get better battery life AND increased specs to the crappy Nexus. Because your e-mail loads equally fast doesn't mean mine does (I have 10k+ messages in my inbox). Because you use your phone for simple games, doesn't mean I don't use it for viewing 3D brain scans.

I used to be a preacher. I have studied various religions as part of my training to be a preacher. I changed my mind about my parental religion at great personal cost. I investigated other religious tenets (Christian and non-Christian) as various friends suggested they may be a 'better fit'.

If you're so wise, please tell me how religions are not trying to safeguard they're own individual collection of fables and myths?

Why does your life or anything at all have to have meaning? In the grand scheme of things, your 1-in-a-billion life form on a speck of dust in the middle of an average galaxy is insignificant. Absence of proof does not mean we can just instantiate a random object to explain things (Bertrand Russell's teapot).

You can devise a scientific test for love if you define what love is. Enjoyment is also relatively easy to explain in regards brain chemistry. You are free to believe what you want but what is the meaning of believing something you can never know for sure?

If you add them up together, they're total sum is 0, they don't come from anywhere and go nowhere. It's basic quantum mechanics. The entire summation of all energy within our Universe is 0.

Not really, the why is not philosophical at all, it is testable and provable that the universe is big enough that random stuff, however remote the possibilities, happens all the time. The why and the how are identical from a scientific viewpoint, that's how science works. Scientists ask the why question and give a how answer.

Time began with the Big Bang. There was no 'before' the Big Bang because time (as we know it) was not there (yet). Because the majority of people fails to understand the reasoning/math behind it doesn't make the theory invalid. We can measure this "mythical nothing", it's the same space between an atoms' nucleus and electron. There is a shit-ton of nothing, the majority of the Universe and everything that exists is "nothing". It may not make immediate sense to you but the Universe is not obligated to make something easier to comprehend, as long as the equations work out.

As a frequent user of the CentOS-6.5-x86_64-minimal.iso install image, I can see that its still not *as* thin as the author describes but none of the unnecessary bits are included and its super-easy to customize.