But still completely and utterly fascinating and relevant, especially since no one seemed to pay to much attention back at CANSECWEST (yet another computer security/tool/hacker/exploit research convention) this year in March when the same group shared their research and did a live demonstration of getting root (or system level, I forget if they hacked a windows or linux box) over the network by taking over the NIC, and not doing anything at all through the host OS.

See their writeup here www.ssi.gouv.fr/IMG/pdf/csw-trustnetworkcard.pdf or go to their company's website http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_article185.html

I believe that it is an absolute requirement to have port forwarding on your landlord's NAT to your NATing router, as well as port forwarding on your own router to the box you are trying to access.

You do realize that when the term "settlers" is used in conjunction with the west bank and gaza, and the term "settlements" as well, its not in reference to Palestinians. It is in reference to Israelis moving in an establishing new settlements there. In places that Palestinians have been living in for a long time. So if you were to move out settlers, you would be removing the Israelis that are moving there.

Have you been playing SC2? I don't want to go online to get the full mutiplayer experience. I don't want it to be difficult to download a custom map outside of Battlenet, and for Blizzard to keep track of what maps I have. When I switch races I want to be in a league (There are 5 levels) that has players close to my skill level, so *I* don't get stomped. If I make a new account to "pick on people" it won't be good for long, because the matchmaking system promotes you very quickly if it notices that you are significantly better than the people in the league you are in.

I agree with your sentiments. Its also possibly the best game in the mmo genre, which is designed to force players to pay the mmo owner monthly to continue playing. I don't really play lots of mmo's, and didn't play wow for very long (in comparison to others), but thought it was the funnest and most well polished mmo I have tried (there might be better, I dont know). So they did good for themselves in the mmo genre. That it is a shitty genre that consumes the lives of those that really get into it is not blizz's fault.

You might call me a Blizzard fanboy. I don't consider myself a fanboy of anything, but I think Blizzard has produced nothing but excellent PC games. Not a single bad one. All 7 of the games they released have been fun, well polished, well supported, and ran decently on older hardware. SC2 is really good. I uninstalled it yesterday because the network-centricity of it is pissing me off. I have a fast computer. I should not have to sit and wait for things to load when I hit the custom maps folder icon (on single player), as the custom maps I have already paid and I assume downloaded, should be on my local machine. Instead I wait for it to do whatever network activity it does to monitor me playing a single player custom map. And then beyond that it just gets worse. This is the first time I personally think I agree with the argument that I would be getting a better product if I find a hacked/cracked version of the game that doesn't do all this network garbage when I just want to start the game from my OS, load a map, and play single player.

It would also be nice to be able to change my account name when on multiplayer. Or even better to just let me make up new account names and start with a 0-0 record, so that I can learn other races in the game without lowering my rating with my main race (as I would lose lots of games and get stomped playing zerg for the first time when I am say at the gold or platinum level with protoss.)

Well....FreeBSD is not Linux. So what does your comment have to do with anything?

Your analogy is not completely isomorphic. If a food or drug manufacturer makes a product, they can directly sell it to any drug store, supermarket or fast food chain. Because the process of eating is the same for all people. You put food in one end, some hours later poop comes out the other end, the details are hidden by the black box of the digestive system.

Computer software is different. Unless there is a 100% agreed upon and followed standard in a hardware/software ecosystem, then different versions of the software will have to exist to account for the various hardware/software configurations. Apple's phone ecosystem is a completely closed and controlled system. A developer has to decide which is the minimum hardware configuration he wants to support (the 1, 2, 3, 3gs or whatever, or the 4) and code from there, knowing it will work on ALL phones that use that version of the OS or higher. Or they can code a reduced feature/functionality/blingbling branch to hit the early version(s) of IOS that don't support all the stuff they want. That is the extent of it.

The situation with Android is a little different. There are many different hardware configurations to support, and many different modifications or branches or forks or implemented features or extensions of the base OS. Having multiple stores will be good for a consumer. I can go to APP store X which I know verifies that all apps work with my version of Android (hopefully). As a developer I know have to ensure that my app meets the quality/interoperability standards of APP store X. But...... I have to QA again and possibly change code to meet the requirements of APP store Y. And again for APP store Z. And so on. Its not good for me as a developer unless I only want to target APP store X, which cuts the market for my apps way down. Or I can use some sort of multiplatform development kit/framework which will do the work of making cross platform/hardware binaries of whatever I am developing, which has its own limitations and trade offs.

So in summary, Steve Jobs does have a point about this and is not spouting straight bullshit. This time.

Anybody with actual apple phone and android phone development under their belt have anything to chime in with, one way or another? Not geek fan-boys of either system, but nerds with useful knowledge and experience to share?

No, the assumption is not made. If someone is working at JPL at a position that does not require a security clearance, then they should be required to submit to a security clearance if and only if they are being moved to a position that actually requires one. They can take one voluntarily ahead of time if they see themselves moving into a sensitive area in the future (as these things can take as long a year to go through depending on how deep the background check has to go) but if they do not aspire to that, then why should they be forced to? Also, if they are go move to a different company/organization, it should be the responsibility of the new company/organization to ensure that they have a valid security clearance (if required for the new job). I believe that is what the lawsuit is about.

You make it sound like the economy is a simple entity that immediately responds to the actions of those in control of the purse strings, budgets, and most importantly, the fiscal policy. It is not that simple. The seeds for the recession that officially began in December 2007 (National Bureau of Economic Research) were laid in place well before the Congress shifted to a Democrat majority in January of 2007. It would have happened regardless of who was in Congress for the 11 months prior to the start.

How is zombies being especially popular as a meme sort of thing in the last few years a reflection of social change? (I know it can be, but please provide the outline of an answer that could take an entire semester of college to explore, otherwise an entire semester of class on it seems like a waste, to me).

I could be wrong, but I think only people majoring in English and related studies are required to take 300 level courses.

If I had to take a 300 level course in a field I wasn't very interested in, I would take the class that seemed most interesting to me. In English, it would probably not be a zombies course.

There is a big difference between The History of Rock and Roll and an English class where you watch movies and read comic books about something in popular culture that has really no impact on it. And by impact I don't mean sales of books movies stickers t-shirts or whatever, I mean an impact like Rock and Roll had of being both a catalyst of social change as well as a reflection of it, and it can be studied in that context and give a student a greater idea about society. It really walks a line between anthropology and music. Zombies movies and comics on the other hand are garbage. A class in the critical psychological deconstruction of the zombie archetype would be more educational and worth pursuing in my opinion (though also a lot more boring and difficult for most people). So yeah, zombies for the lowest common denominator. Brains. Brains. Seriously, where are the brains? Not in this class.

Grabage. If I wanted to watch 16 zombie movies, I would watch 16 zombies movies. If I wanted to write a screenplay about zombies, I would write a screenplay (and if it sucked, then hopefully I'd learn and the next one would be better). If I wanted to spend either my parent's money, or the taxpayer's money, or money own money in the form of student loans to hang out with the lame ass people that like zombies because its currently a popular meme and don't realize the only reason most people like zombies is because its a currently popular meme, then I would take this course.

Disclaimer. I like some zombie movies. I hate zombie-everything just to mention zombie which has zombie become popular nowadays zombie zombie zombie zombie. Zombie.

Please look at the summary again. The significant part is not that it found that people who drink in moderation live longer than people who abstain, (which is the type of result that you are linking to) it found that PEOPLE WHO ABSTAIN DO NOT LIVE AS LONG AS PEOPLE THAT DRINK HEAVILY. Sorry for the yelling, but I think many people might quickly skim over the summary and assume its the same sort of thing that has already been reported on, moderate drinking has health benefits vs. abstention. This is something else, in this study of some 2,000 people, the results showed that in order of decreasing lifespan it went like this:

Moderate drinkers > Heavy drinkers > Abstainers

So now the discussion here can be was the study flawed in some way or is this true and alcohol has some effect, physically, psychologically (because how one feels does have an effect on health) or both on humans that is beneficial to living a long life.