Not sure where you got that piece of info, but they were using them in Chicago yesterday...

And this is "unfortunate" why, exactly?

It's disturbing that this is modded "interesting" rather than funny...

Yes, but the arxiv is filled with all sorts of gibberish submissions as well. It is a wonderful and very useful repository, but just assuring that a paper is placed there doesn't mean that those wanting to access those papers will be able to dig through the mess to find it.

But the worst part is that absolutely no warning is given when submitting info on a completely unencrypted page. So the message is that somehow encryption via self-signed certificates is worse than just no encryption at all.

We get all these retarded warnings about "You are viewing an encrypted page, but some of the information is not encrypted! Oh noes!" But how freaking hard is it to pop up a warning on any form you try to submit that's unencrypted? Or if you think that would be too annoying, any form that includes a password field?

Although it's quite possible for your time to be valued $0/hr, as is the case if you enjoy mucking about in the guts of a computer until you get a beautiful arrangement. Let's face it, if you're running some BSD/*nix, you like to fiddle with shit.

make sure you get the extended warranty then - I've had to replace the battery, hard drive, dvd player, and screen of my macbook, and this thing doesn't even get used when I'm not travelling.

I second that one wholeheartedly. The GUI admin, which is billed as this "any average Joe can run a network" (which is how I got stuck with it with no training) is completely inadequate if you're doing anything completely non-trivial, but thinks it know better than you and clobbers any edits you make to the config files.

Also, the DHCP and NAT fail tremendously. I told the server to serve DHCP and provide NAT services to the subnet so that my cluster would have one forward facing IP address. This worked great until someone unplugged the LAN cable, leaving the WAN as the only living connection. Since I had NAT on, OSX Server decided I must really want it, and just made a mistake for what side I wanted it on. So it happily started serving up DHCP requests on the wider network, at least until OIT hunted it down and screamed at me.

it just works my ass

...I am incredibly disheartened by the number of people using terrible grammar and spelling in order to bemoan the anti-intellectualism of our society.

Too bad apple's X11 is broken all to hell

Even outside purely academic circles, there are plenty of real world effects. If I develop a drug which causes blindness but I falsify my data to show that it in fact cures cancer, and some company markets this drug based on my research, you will certainly see an effect. Of course, this is an extreme example, but similar results apply for most levels of falsification.

not to mention the extra geek cred that this solution gets you.

I've been trying to come up with a way to install a webcam somewhere in the department lounge so I can be the first to know when free food shows up...

Hear hear!

A government too weak to pass any laws but those that are blindingly, obviously necessary is my kind of government.

Anyone know where I can get one of those?