Please send me plenty of spam, especially ones of nude women. Ive never seen a naked woman before so it would be nice

At first I thought you made a joke. But this is Slashdot, so, who knows, you may be telling the truth...

If repairing the roof in my house gets too expensive, I just might follow your line of reasoning and move back into a cave.

Your economic diversity is another word for desperation. I would imagine it is not easy to become a computer expert without a computer. This is a problem that requires particular ingenuity. I don't know the mechanism behind India's IT education system, but I am well familiar with the results. They rarely fail to disappoint. Why is this not the case for Chinese IT specialists? This is a country with similar economic diversity with Communist ideology on top of it. And yet, most Chinese computer engineers I worked with were at the very least adequate.

Go visit india and you'll learn how it is done.!

I already watched Slumdog Millionaire, so I don't think I will be visiting India any time soon. I also watched Borat and I think I'd rather visit Kazakhstan. Besides, I don't need to see how "it is done": I am already well familiar with the results.

It is about outsourcing. Remote support is not a bad thing in itself. I've been supporting most of my systems remotely for almost four years now. But when there is a hardware problem, I can be at the site in under an hour. Our operators are also remote and are not much help. Those of you with experience supporting Linux clusters know that hardware problems are much more common with these systems than with enterprise-class Unix servers. I keep a record of all the failed parts and let them pile up for a couple of weeks, so I don't have to drive to work every day. We do have a designated touch labor guy for onsite support, but he was dropped on his head when he was a child. Aside from keeping the servers running, my other duty is to throw sand in our management's dreams of outsourcing everything to India. I have nothing against Indians - they need jobs like everybody else. However, most computer specialists from India I had a chance to work with over the years were grossly incompetent. Perhaps it's just my bad luck. Or, maybe, it is very silly of us to expect a country with one of the lowest numbers of computers per capita in the world to produce so many qualified computer engineers.

I am sure you missed the news: the V-22 Osprey is already in service.

It's a bit unclear if he really "hacked" anything. The lawyers allege he "circumvented the technical measures", aka the "Zoomify" applet. However, "Zoomify" is intended to make it easier to view hi-res photos - not to prevent you from viewing them. From their site: "Zoomify makes high-quality images zoom-and-pan for fast, interactive viewing on the web". This application was not designed to protect copyright work: a fact to which its creators, no doubt, will readily attest.

Security is a process - not a state. Computer security is like a horizon - an imaginary line that seems to move farther away as you move toward it. The only way any network and systems on that network can be reasonably protected is if there is a recurring yearly budget. In most companies computer security is an afterthought in the IT budget. Sort of, like, if there's money left, we'll spend it on security. Or save it. The bottom line is that most companies simply can't afford meaningful security measures and most of those that can, choose not to spend the money. This entire IT security business is usually just good enough to keep the amateurs out.

The smaller number of exploits targeting Mac does make it a more secure platform, even if a big reason for that is a smaller user base. As far as I am aware, there are only three Macs in existence: a laptop owned by my boss, my idiot cousin's G5, and the one I've seen on House. I am sure there a few I am missing.

But I agree with your point regarding targeted attacks. If you ask the so-called Unix geeks on Slashdot if Unix platforms are susceptible to, say, Internet worms or other malware, I am certain a high percentage will be quite literally foaming at the mouth trying to convince you that Unix is invulnerable to such attacks.

I had a Win 98 system like that. It was sitting under my desk at work and I used it as a foot rest. The uptime that thing had - you wouldn't believe. Granted, the only thing that computer did was keep my legs elevated and my feet warm. But still, it was up 24/7 for well over a year. Maybe Microsoft will use my story in one of their commercials.

They have cars in the UK?

If directing behavior of citizens is not the primary role of a government, then what is? Delivering mail? The government is there to create and enforce laws that, in an ideal democratic society, are the government's best interpretation of the people's will. And what are laws if not ways of controlling behavior of the citizens?

You speak of moderation as if it was an inherent ability in humans. Look at the advertising imagery used by the fast food industry. Who do you think all these kings and clowns target? Are they after rational adults? No. They are after people who don't know the first thing about the value of good health, diet, exercise, or moderation. They target children. And, if the only way for a child to learn moderation is by turning into a diabetic fatass, then I will gladly support any law that will rid our society of the scourge that is fast food industry.

I am running 50,000 virtual servers on my three Dell laptops! Why am I not on the list? Seriously, are we counting physical machines or virtual ones? One system I support is a cluster of 80 HP 585s, each running eight virtual servers. So that's like 640 "servers" in just ten racks. It would be interesting to know who has the most servers in, say, kilograms as opposed to imaginary filesystems.

Here in the real world I prefer not to generalize and to see shades of gray. Do we sell cigarettes and alcohol to minors? No. If certain fast food is that bad for the kids, make it illegal to market or sell it to minors.

It is a well-established medical fact that cardiovascular deceases are more common in blacks than in whites. I propose a "black tax" on barbecue grills, chicken wings, and Hennessy cognac. This would make at least as much sense and will be just as constitutional as the proposed "fat tax".