Aren't all string instructions essentially math instructions? In fact, aren't all software instructions of any type reducible to mathematics when you get down to the metal?

I've never tried to make a call but I have happily sent texts during a flight before. I can't say I paid much attention to it at the time, but I'm pretty sure I had a good bar or two of reception, at least whilst over land, so I'm guessing a call could have worked ok too. I'm sure the sitting-in-a-metal-tube thing won't help but presumably the windows allow enough RF to pass through.

Also, some of the passengers of 'flight 93' made calls to their loved ones during the 9/11 hijackings.

Spot on. The Java browser plugin is the real life vector for getting pwned, not Java the language or the Java virtual machine. Malicious code written in C could do a lot worse with a lot less lines of code - it's just that we don't have browser plugins for running x86 code. Ok... with Google's NaCl, that may be changing!

If Oracle want to save Java's reputation they have to kill the browser plugin. Like you suggest, make it an optional legacy download and set a date for when it will be killed off completely.

Your problem with some file formats not playing will more than likely be down to the Netgear box not supporting the wide array of file formats and codec variations you'll find in use on the net. All proprietary players suck because of this. For something cheap and very full featured, try Raspbmc on a Raspberry Pi (with the optional codecs and a remote control). Raspbmc will play absolutely anything you throw at it.

On the server side it's much easier. Either stick with Plex (it will probably be fine streaming to a decent player like Raspbmc / XBMC) or you could try something like MediaTomb or PS3 Media Server, both of which offer transcoding too (for shitty players).

Have you tried Clementine? It's cross platform and open source (started off as a QT port of Amarok 1.4) and IMO is the most useable music player around right now.

I totally agree with this. Amarok was a nice little player a few years back but has since become bit of a UI / feature mess in my opinion.

Clementine is great; clean UI, unobtrusive, open source, cross platform, decent podcast support, device sync, internet streaming (supporting quite a few services) and just does everything I want in a music library / player without going over the top.

Squirt Drive

Best they triple patch it, just to be sure.

It is indeed an awesome photo, but personally, I think Voyager 1's Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth is much more thought provoking.

Wikipedia has a write-up about it here.

So, out of interest, how are you securing this unpatched XP machine? I can understand that if it's firewalled, with no open ports, it may be resistant to direct connections from outside but that's not enough for a typical machine doing useful work. If the machine makes network requests, or works on data from removable media, it is way more than likely to be vulnerable to some buffer overflow type response that can be fed to it. You know, the type of vulnerabilities that turn up every few weeks or so and (hopefully) get patched.

Or you could just click the 'Slashdot Classic' link in the footer. :)

Only 3? I've been the sys admin for a small number of web servers (for hobby and small business projects) for nearly 15 years and I see break-in attempts (*) from numerous IPs on a near constant basis; every few minutes a new, offending IP ends up getting blocked by my firewall. Nowadays, something close to 95% of these 'attacks' originates from China, where as only a few years ago the attacks were reasonably well distributed across the globe, with places like the Ukraine and Russia appearing highest on the list of offenders. Of course, the source IP may just be a proxy for the true source of the attack, so it is hard to say for sure where most originate from.

* The vast majority of break-in attempts I see are simple password guessing attempts for widely used account usernames. Disabling root login, enforcing use of SSH keys and using something like Fail2ban takes care of these with ease.

When you are assigned a different IP address by your ISP, does a reverse DNS lookup for your IP show the same or a different FQDN? I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one ISP update rDNS entries so a customer specific domain name always points to them, regardless of assigned IP. If that's the case, you can change your IP as often as you like but you'll always be reachable by the same FQDN.

How about donating them to a school?

Positive longitude is east. Positive latitude is north.