Actually, at this point it's exactly a share taxi. I wonder when Americans will realize they've just re-invented a form of semi-formal public transport that's common in undeveloped countries without real public transport.

Ditto; just tested to be sure - my email from my self-hosted domains gets through just fine. This is not a 'Comcast is blocked' problem. This is a 'submitter's IP address is blocked' problem.

I actually think the 'I Robot' movie is anti-Asimov. One of the reasons the 'I Robot' stories are so famous is because Asimov treated robots as machines: They generally work as designed, but break or have flaws in their design that need to be fixed, and can be. They are complex machines, so they have complex flaws, but the flaws are the same types of flaws that you have in other complex machines, and the robots do not become monsters because of those flaws. Robot stories before him (and many after him, and nearly all in Hollywood...) tend to either treat robots as monsters, just waiting to get lose from their creators, or gods, able to fix all problems. The movie 'I Robot' is a prime example of the 'monster' archetype.

(People tend to bring up a couple of later stories he wrote when I bring up this argument - stories where his robots do start to evolve into fitting the god archetype. But: 1 - it's 'evolve', they were machines that were being perfected, not instant fixes, and 2 - they were later stories, where Asimov was subverting expectations about his own writing.)

Depends on which books, and where in his career he was. He got fairly blatant around mid-career, although rarely actually explicit. When they say 'Foundation Series' it's open to interpretation on which books are likely meant - The original three were early in his career, and didn't really have much sex in them. The later two (mid-career) at the end have sex as a major plot driver/enabler, and the two prequels (end-career) feature it without making it a huge point. So it depends somewhat on where they start. I'm betting they'll start with the prequels - they have a strong central character, and can lead into the rest without much issue even after he dies. (And a fair amount of sex if they want it.)

The other point I'd be worried about is violence - the Foundation Series is about the fall of an empire and the rise of a new one, but actual fighting doesn't occur often. There are several places where it looks like it's about to, but then the forces of history make it unnecessary. (Or the populace gets mind-controlled, in one case...) It'd be very tempting for a director of a drama series to ramp up the violence, but it would change a large part of the point of the stories.

Oh, and in response to a couple levels up: They didn't use robots for sex in the stories. They didn't use robots for anything, in fact. There was a complete ban on higher-level AIs and on humanoid machines, to the level of taboo. (Although there were a few characters who where extremely humanoid robots in the prequels and sequels - and were basically the reason for the bans.)

Setting up SPF correctly for your domain does have the side-effect of stopping a lot of bounceback spam (where they forge your address and send it to someone else, so you get the rejection), and can be useful for that reason alone.

But yeah, incoming mail it's not really a big discriminator. Worth looking at slightly, but not really all that useful. (Which means in general it's just more work you'll need to do to set up an email server, which doesn't have much benefit.)

I used both BASIC and HyperCard - they were dramatically different approaches. If you want a modern BASIC, try Perl or Python or Ruby or - you get the picture. There are dozens of suitable replacements; simple direct languages that can write a short command-line program easily.

And you show the result to the average user out there and they won't even think it's a program. If you want a GUI - like everything out there today - you'll have to work on a major lift, some complex API that takes months to master, and days even for an experienced programmer to learn.

HyperCard could get you a simple GUI-based program in minutes, that even a beginner could do. You could actually get quite a ways without writing a single line of 'code' - though you still needed to think about the structure of how you moved through the application. It could even be argued that you can teach that structural thought easier to certain types of learners, as you get a more dramatic and visual result.

But the largest thing for a beginner that HyperCard could offer was a feeling of accomplishment: In a few minutes you had what 'felt' like a real application, with a GUI and everything. It doesn't look like a cliff to get to the point of writing a program that they can show off to their friends - even if it's a simple program.

There are roles for both, but to get someone interested in programming, I think HyperCard is probably better. Once you have that pull out the major arcania of complex API's and huge libraries.

I just had an excellent counter-argument today: Work uses one password to log into their benefits site and into the handheld scanner used on the floor. The handheld scanner has a keyboard of less than 20 keys - numbers are easy, letters are hard, capital letters are really hard, and special characters are impossible. And there's no other input.

My login to my benefits is now controlled by the password I can type into what's basically a telephone keypad. Because that's where I need to type it a couple of times a day.

Because the average human being can actually read it better off of a changing analog-style dial than they can understand a bare number. It has to do with us being well developed at judging distances for throwing and jumping. (And an analog dial allows you to read both off of one instrument.)

The other place analog (or analog-style) gauges shine is when the rate of change is more important than the value. Speedometers and tachometers are good examples: You usually care more if you are speeding up, slowing down, or keeping the same speed than whether you are going 65 or 66mph.

Depends on what PHP is doing. If it makes a call to system(), anywhere... No, you are not. (Assuming you have bash as /bin/sh - the BSD's don't, and some Linux distros don't.)

If it stays entirely within PHP, then you are. But that'd be a lot of work to double check - You need to check every line of code you run, and the php interpreter itself to see where it calls out.

From the Ars story on the article: Apparently there's some newish law that would keep them from commenting specifically on Section 215 - If they want to do aggregate disclosure they have to group it with disclosures under another law. (Section 702 - which we know they have received orders under, since it was in the Snowden files.) (They also have the option of doing non-aggregate disclosures, but they couldn't do it immediately.)

Assuming POP/IMAP and SMTP aren't blocked - which is even more likely to be the case than that the Gmail page is blocked.

Might work, but doesn't solve any of this guy's problems.

Sure. If the Internet service is that bad, I’m guessing it's some developing country that's nationalized the Internet. Therefore, they want you using their servers and services, because half the point is to make spying on you easier. Not particularly uncommon... (Often they'll only block it if it's encrypted or something like that.)

Actually, an iPad sounds like exactly what he's looking for: Locked-down, with specific functions accessible. There's even some provisions for remote maintenance by authorized personnel. (He'd have to get OS X server and configure things first, I think, but it should be possible.) Main problem is dealing with connecting it to a dial-up link.

You are making the assumption that Gmail isn't blocked, and that the users in question would be open to changing their email addresses.

Also, webmail over dialup has the distinct disadvantage of requiring you to be online to read your email. This ties up your phone line, and may cost money. Batch-download is normally a better solution over intermittent links: Connect to get your email, disconnect, read it, write replies, connect to send. Total time online: usually less than a minute.