Actually, the Romans technically held out until the Fall of Constantinople, which was a lot further along than 700 years. ;)

Also, considering the world and its mores at that time, the Romans were rather polite indeed. Usually a conquered people would see all the teen/adult males killed, the women dragged off to slavery (if not killed along with everyone else), and everything of value plundered. See also a huge chunk of Exodus and the conquest of Canaan (the Hebrews weren't exactly choir boys when it was they who had the strength and power, no?)

But, no - the Romans (usually) settled for taking a percent as slaves and then proceeding to absorb their culture, religion, and the better parts of what was left. Then they built roads, utilities, entertainment, and a whole shitload of things that were pretty effing amazing - for the time. Yup - they were brutal as fuck at times (see also Caesar's conquest of Gaul), but if the conquered people submitted, it usually went way the hell easier on them than it would at the hands of any other civilization at the time (save for the Greeks, but then the Romans pretty much absorbed most Greek philosophy, mathematics, religion, laws, etc etc...)

Many of us who have owned boats know that BOAT = "Break Out Another Thousand [dollars]"

On the other hand, commercial shipping companies know this too, and diesel/electric ships ain't cheap either (let one sit still for more than a couple hours, and it's like standing in a 'septic tank while ripping up million-dollar bills' (the latter part almost literally).

Sail is tougher not necessarily because of expense, but because winds are gonna be a bitch to predict reliably enough for commerce and timetables.

Kinda proves what AC was saying in a way; I only skimmed it, but it not hit not only the Greek cities, but slammed everyone who depended on them... along, well, trade routes.

I could see, say, a Chinese civil war causing massive shockwaves along logistic lines that pretty much slam the EU and US almost instantly, Russia shortly after, and everyone else in turn after that. If there are no redundancies in place, the whole house collapses globally.

And yeah - we're fast becoming that interconnected, if we're not already.

...maybe they just had shitty email prioritization and crappy (read: default) alerting configs on their gear? Given that the typical admin in a large corp gets bombarded with a jillion emails daily (ranging from fluff to drop-dead serious, because vendors rarely know the difference), I can see warnings get buried in the pile pretty easily. Mind you this is not to excuse not acting on the warnings, but instead is posited as a way to explain why the warnings got missed in the first place.

All that said, any security admin who doesn't make alerting and prioritization thereof his first priority really shouldn't be employed as a security admin.

Among others, Oracle ASM disk management.

...next question?

So is nearly every book in my little home library**, but I'll be damned if any publisher or author will tell me what shelf those books go on, or what books I can set any given book next to. Put it this way: If I want to set my Isaac Asimov novels next to my Robert Heinlein novels, I will. Any publisher who objects? Screw 'em; no court will enforce such a demand on me by either party.

For relevance, I can safely say that no software house will be able to successfully litigate against someone who successfully multi-boots any computing device they paid for. Therefore, by default it's quite legal.

** I have a few books of late 19th Century vintage, so it's safe to assume those to be public domain by now.

True indeed... though it's kind of funny that all this ink and hot air is being wasted over "naming" rights.

Hell, if "naming" something were permanent and enforceable, we'd all still be living on Terra right now instead of Earth... and outside of SciFi novels, well, that ain't happening.

Tomorrow morning I could hereby re-name North America "Peanut Butter Sandwich", and if I could convince enough of my fellow inhabitants to do the same, we'd be living in USPBS. Instead, we live on a continent named by some obscure cartographer back in the 16th Century who was giving props to some dude who saw part of it and went home.

'course the real fun begins when you get more than one language involved. Just ask the Germans/Allegmainoise(sp?)/Deutschlaender/etc...

Wow - butthurt much?

Funny, but almost true: If you truly want a vacation paid for by the company, you make certain that the course is in another city, and that you have to be there to take it.

Otherwise, an online course simply means that you take the course while being constantly interrupted by users, managers, and other people who think you don't mind being interrupted for "just a second".

...until it breaks, that is. But then, you could always *pay* someone who knows the command line to fix it for you...

Are you kidding? The very first thing I do when I see a Linux GUI is CTRL+ALT+F1 (or F2, F3... anything to get a normal tty). In any other *nix, I immediately pop open a terminal and do all my work there.

For those who know why, no explanation is necessary. For those who do not (*cough*MCSA types*cough*), no explanation will suffice.

I strongly suggest doing this. I've lost track of the sysadmin job candidates that I've had to turn down because the vast majority of our environment is not Windows, and a string of Microsoft-centric accomplishments with occasional dabbling in Linux is a non-starter.

Only one of the past seven positions I've held over the years was a strictly Windows-centric shop, and only one other tried to be (until I showed them a better way, eventually leading to a 50/50 mix of Windows+Linux, which cut down our EA costs greatly.)

Thing is, over time, you'll find more and more that shops are not drinking the koolaid anymore, and are balancing out their stable with a wide mix of stuff. No sense in limiting yourself, is there?

Shit, there's been an intro to Linux course out for free for, like, 14 years now: it was written to be self-guided. I know this because, well, I wrote it.

(original announcement )

(...I'm kind of amazed it's still available online, though seeing it in .doc format is kinda funny. Tried to find the original Slashdot announcement, but the search engine on the site sucks.)

Most of what you wrote is typical shill-chow, but I want to stomp this one tidbit in the bud:

Now this is funny, because I find myself learning new GUIs on a very regular basis (the latest? This month is all about learning VMWare vCloud Automation Center. A few months ago, it was all about Cisco UCS Manager.)

I also know the Metro GUI very well - and I've discovered something: I really, really detest computing-by-easter-egg.

Mind you, it's 500x worse with having to use that stupid wasteful GUI on a server. (Yes, I know all about the mantra of "OMG use PowerShell and Core!!!111!!" but we both know that's bullshit, nobody does it on any serious scale, and it completely guts the Microsoftie argument of "OMG you have to use a command prompt in Leenux!!111!!" - but I digress.)

Point is, many of us who detest that abortion of a UI have already had to work with it, we know it, and we think it still sucks in spite of knowing it.

If some of the ordinary user crowd loves it, hey - well and good. Thing is, the majority does not, and for good reason.

I may be wrong on this, but in the US, HIPAA would rule the day on such a case, no? That would mean that 200k Pounds Sterling would be a wee drop in the bucket compared to the fine such an organization would face here should it face a data leak of that magnitude.

Remove the mission statement of the place... this is confidential patient information, and should be safeguarded as such. If the place demands to be treated as a health facility (even if social), then it has to take the responsibilities along with the benefits.