Well I for one almost don't care to contribute to wikipedia for a particular reason - Self righteous editors, I have submitted multiple articles even started one that funny enough still lives, but lately I'm fed up. I have multiple times tried to submit an article on an actor of some renown, at least the same as all the other actors I've seen on Wikipedia only to see it deleted. I then recreated my submission on my own personal wikipedia page and built it more or less to completion refering to exzternal sources as well as substantiated sources on wikipedia, and was planning on working on it there until I figured out what to do out of fear that the editors would heckle and remove the page again, but it happened even on my user space page. The person I'm talking about is both an actor that has played in movies seen by most of the slashdot audience as well as designed costumes for multiple movies, and I just can't get into my head why it is so hard to be allowed to start a stub (a quite thorough one actually - The wikipedians even mentioned considerable contributions in the deletion babble). I find their actions offensive that even as it was under my personal user space it could not be left alone without an eager beaver editor butting in, same for a previous short piece on Cheops-Ng a tool used in connection with networks etc., funny how other open source programs and projects are allowed but no Cheops-ng and same with the actor who is actually a brilliant guy doing considerable charitable work and traveling the world doing his thing. I find it hard to respect the deletionists working at wikipedia and think that rather than focusing on user friendliness they should take a long look inwards to see the true reasons that contributions might be stagnating. I for one shall think twice before wasting time contributing there again. For the heck of it try to do a google search on deletion wikipedia.... makes you think...

I feel sick whenever I hear the name Apple these days... why ? Well take a look around you. This so called innovator which has its roots in the work of giants like Engelbart. FTA: "Digitude was founded in 2010 and raised $50 million from Altitude Capital Partners, with aims to “acquire, aggregate, and license key technology areas within the consumer electronics and related technology fields in a patent consortium” — in other words, it buys up patents and then sues other companies until they settle and agree to pay licensing fees, because it’s generally less expensive than actually going to court." How stark is the contrast to Doug Engelbart's career and thinking a true computer scientist and pioneer who actually focused his career on making the world a better place; A man who wanted to help harness the collective human intellect of all the people contributing to effective solutions boosting every effort on the planet to solve important problems and how he wanted to do this - By using computers as the vehicle. Engelbart is begind a lot of the technologies that many people today believe Apple "invented". 1964, the first prototype computer mouse to use with a graphical user interface (GUI), 'windows'. In the same ballpark: Computer video teleconferencing, hypermedia, groupware, email, the Internet and more can be attributed to Engelbart and other giants like Vint Cerf. So how can it be that companies today claim that their patents are essential for them to exist, so essential in fact that they need to extort, prevent and destroy others from building on their work... oh wait... not Apple or the likes, but actually on the work of the aforementioned giants, who again based their work on their peers, past and present. What is happening to the tech industry? Has it become so infested with the lawyers and trolls that we have seen destroy the music industry, that it is grinding to a standstill benefitting noone but the few that are building up their weapons portfolio consisting of "digital weapons of mass destruction"? Has the time not come to say, "enough is enough" and blow a big giant hole in the supertanker that tech patents have become. Is it not time to say to Apple and it's likes "NO MORE". The weapon you can use is not buying their goods, yeah someone will probably sue me for attempting to instigating a boycott against this company and other tech bullies, who truly contribute nothing at all to the betterment of mankind, but merely try to squeeze out and extract every penny from you and me who are being held in a deathgrip by a completely flawed patent system. And before you feel like answering - Stop the blabbering about patents protecting the inventors... that is complete garbage and propaganda (a sad song indeed). The fact is that for every patent issued, mankind is being held back and delayed yet another 17 years multiplied by a factor of thousands as the cumulative effects of tech patents and patent trolls are squashing any idea and though that might actually lead to a better future for everyone. What a legacy to leave behind for the coming generations, which will probably look back on this time, as the dark ages of information technology, with the patent trolls in the role of the spanish inquisition. There is no way but our way and if you do not agree... Take a time out and make up your mind to stop all this patent nonsense now the sooner it ends the sooner we can get on with solving this worlds problems, making our lives easier and bettering our world!

I can't help but thinking if it isn't time to forget the Microsoft/Apple/Google lock in and go all W3C. Programmers of the world would do well to forget Microsoft/Apple/Google lock in via the app stores!!! Use W3C web standards to code your applications current and experimental (HTML5 etc.). Use and/or create alternate payment channels to get paid for your creations, why should you pay someone 20-30% for selling your creation ? Utilize the app stores of these giants only so long as it is convenient for yourself to do so, do not let yourself be lured into letting them control your creations and your revenue. You still have some freedom left - Why don't you use it ? The web is still open and needs to stay that way to ensure free and fair competition, but it will only stay that way if you keep coding to open and accessible standards and only if you do not allow yourselves to be drawn completely into the ecosystems of the aforementioned giants who have themselves and not you as their primary focus.... I could go on and on but I'll leave it here and leave with you my strongest wishes for you to code open source applications according to open standards and making sure you create a decentralized distribution system to ensure maximum exposure and minimum control of others over your creations. Allowing anyone the opportunity to completely kill your application because some lawyer says so is insane and customers allowing a company to remotely delete products they purchased... well... It hurts my brain to find a reason as to why you would allow them this liberty... must be apathy to all the long EULA's that people never bother to read because no sane person would surely not let anyone sell them a product only to take it away without even asking permission or offer a refund... please say they would'nt

LOL - sounds familiar.... maybe the Kings should have patented this business method... Abstract: Method to extract money from unsuspecting peons, method includes uncircumventable practice to prevent said peons from avoiding such taxation atrocities eg. shutting down the internet access for said peons, this practice can also be applied in the event that anyone finds a way to circumvent the access to such taxable content.

As long as you don't use peppermint flavors in your solutions as that would infringe on my MobTaste(TM) patented solution for adding taste to mobile applications...

DNA analyses YOU!

As someone working as a Network Engineer I would recommend you look at GNS3 since you can install it via sources or via a deb package, you already have the address in other post in this thread. The nice thing about GNS is that if you build the network and installe the images (that is the trouble part) you need actual cisco images, you might be able to obtain them for educational purposes, and why not approach Cisco to ask. The worst thing you could get is a no on the other hand you might end up with a system that acts as the devices do in real life, an ideal playground in which to learn about networking, but to properly learn get hold of a package generator to stream your simulated environment. http://sourceforge.net/projects/packeth/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/pacgen/ http://bittwist.sourceforge.net/ http://sourceforge.net/projects/traffic/ http://gull.sourceforge.net/ http://mc-mint.sourceforge.net/ Are just some of the available package generators. Also someone else mentioned wireshark http://www.wireshark.org/ - That tool is a must for anyone serious about learning about networking and someone teaching about it. NMAP is another must as well http://nmap.org/ Good luck with your efforts

If you collaborate on documents I would seriously consider a wiki - http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki is extremely simple to set up. You get revision control - Plug In structure for ODF/PDF export, easy editing etc. Plus a wiki is accessible even from a simple mobile browser with no extra installation needed. Multicast... well - More or less accessible to all at the same time. Looking forward to see this thread develop, as it could prove to be immensely helpful for any FOSS organization/project.