Not all Linux fans. I'm a Linux fan. I recognize that it's not suitable for non-techie users. There is literally no focus on end user development - that's what I like about it!

It's sysadmin / developer oriented and I hope that never changes.

not to mention that he's doing it wrong: you put your hotel on Boardwalk first, since you get the most money AND the most likely landing there thanks to the "Advance token to boardwalk" cards.

But they aren't the best investment anyway; you'd do better putting your hotels on Orange, then Red/Yellow, then Light Blue...

Tsk, tsk....

We solved this problem once before - with fossil fuels. The answer is simply to have more capacity on hand than demand. We can do the exact same thing with alternative energy.

The difference is only that alternative energy doesn't have an "off" button, so we simply have to assume that, given a source of alternative energy, EG: a windmill, that we won't necessarily use all of its capacity. If we built gobs and gobs of windmills and solar panels, and installed them in such a way that not all their potential output is used all the time, we have a stable power grid.

The only difference is that the "off" button has to work differently. EG: a solar panel installation could dump unused power to a heating element or something. If power companies were smart enough to "get out in front" of this problem, they'd switch to the business of transporting power, which includes managing demand.

Unfortunately, power companies are run by myopic trolls, so I'm not expecting this business transition to go smoothly.

Poppycock.

While FTTN entails a fiber optic cable passed around public easements, coming to the home means setting up appointments for each home within the neighborhood. If it takes only 3x as much to do the houses too, I'd be surprised.

While the equipment involved might still be expensive, the cost of the personnel to install them is nothing to be trifled with.

... and it's not like it's difficult to record your calls. Heck you can do it *automatically* and just keep the calls you care about!

I *had* a tablet - a 7" Acer Android - that I loved and used daily until I upgraded my phone to a RAZR Maxx HD. I had an Android phone before but the screen was small and/or low resolution enough that I preferred the bright, sharp 7" tablet. The new phone, however, is big/bright/sharp/fast enough that I lost interest in the tablet, which I still have but haven't picked up ever since.

And the battery life on this thing is just incredible. I will never again buy a phone that doesn't have incredible battery life - after having a decent screen, it's the next most important thing in a phone!

We have a well-funded government agency, tasked with securing its country, actively sabotaging the security frameworks of the nation it has been tasked with protecting, in the name of "security". Never mind that any back door left open to the NSA is also left open to other parties. (EG: China) And now we're supposed to *trust* this agency with even more unfettered access to 0-day exploits?

If the NSA was really about securing the United States, it would be auditing commercial security products to ensure the *lack* of back doors, not ensuring the presence of them!

It's important not to accept any input as pure fact on its face. It's equally important to accept facts that are verified, even if inconvenient. Far too often, "healthy skepticism" is another way to say "inconvenient so LA LA LA LA LA (fingers in ears)".

Fact is that micro pollutants are just now entering the threshold of human understanding - and it's a bigger problem than just about anybody guessed.

I've seen no such correlation.

I recently stayed at a "fancy" hotel in Reno, NV that charged $5 for the Wifi, only to get dreadfully slow speeds. I also recently stayed at a "Best Value Inn" or something like that near Moreno Valley and despite the clearly packed night and free Wifi, speeds were excellent.

Care to guess where I'll prefer when I'm back in either area?

I wonder how this CPU performs? Does it compare to anything I'd care about, or is it more akin to something I'd build a wifi router out of?

... and it's pretty pointless. No bugs? You are certainly joking, or at the very least, clueless.

There are *always* bugs and always will be. So what? Many bugs just aren't worth fixing, and are even debatable as a bug. Bugs come in all forms:

A) The software doesn't do what it is specifically designed to do. (obvious, must fix)

B) The software does exactly what it's supposed to do in an insecure way that can be exploited in some fashion. (probably should fix, unless the "insecure" way is part of the assumed envelope of use. For example, the common practice of using an SSL reverse proxy got Google in trouble with the NSA yet using a reverse proxy isn't itself generally considered a "bug".

C) The software does what it's designed to do, but not in a way that the user expects. (Is this a bug? Or PEBCAK?)

D) The software does what it's supposed to but not when an unexpected environment is encountered. (Example: this product is incompatible with A/V $FOO)

E) The software interacts with other software in an unexpected way.

F) The software lacks a feature that some customers would find useful.

G) The software implements a feature in an unattractive or cumbersome way. ... and so on.

A PENCIL has bugs! Yes, a pencil. The lead breaks easily. The eraser doesn't remove *all* the marking when you use it. It requires a sharpener. You can't sign a contract with a pencil. They are horrible for lefties who end up with a dark stripe on the side of the their hand. The paint can sometimes discolor your finger. And on and on and on...

These are all "bugs" yet the design of a pencil hasn't been updated to fix them. There are few things as simple as a !@#$% pencil yet these obvious bugs have *never* been fixed. Oh sure, some have. There have been erasable pens. There are mechanical pencils. Pens can perform some of the duties of a pencil.

So if a bug-free pencil hasn't yet been made, how in the name of anything holy do you expect something millions of times more complex to be "bug free"?

Expensive advertising campaigns engender trust because it shows that the advertiser has the resources to carry out the campaign. It's why online ads are so commonly ignored - people want to do business with "reputable" companies and expensive advertising is a way of establishing repute.

Similarly, putting out the modicum of effort to perform basic security like SSL is a signal that the website is reputable. I mean, if you can't be bothered to buy a $50 SSL certificate and install it, are you *really* trustworthy?

SSL should be a basic signal of trustworthiness.

Actually, I have a physically secured, locked box full of hard drives that I haven't bothered to wipe or destroy. Our approximate policy is to use in house for other purposes if it makes sense, or throw into the box. HDDs just 3 to 5 years old are basically worthless. For storage in volume, anything smaller than about 2 or 3 TB is ready to be replaced, just because of the savings in electricity.

The most bad-ass server I've ever had the pleasure of working with was a Digital VAX 11/750 generations ago. It was *built* to be reliable from the very first rivet.

Oh sure, my pocket phone has far more power, memory, and storage. Despite the ample square footage of my "McMansion" house, It would not have fit in my kitchen. It ate power like global warming really was a myth. But as a server, it was in its own class.

It would automatically detect memory that was failing and rebuild from memory (like ECC) but then would remap that address so it would no longer be used.

You could upgrade its CPUs one at a time without shutting it down.

It was like a hoover with data, versioning files was intrinsic to how the O/S worked.

One time, the A/C in the computer room went out. It mapped *everything* in RAM to disk as the temperature rose and the chips became unreliable. We literally pulled the plug on it because it was completely unresponsive, as all operations were working directly off HDD. When the A/C was fixed and it was powered up late that night, it spooled all of RAM out of the HDD swap, and everybody's workstation resumed exactly where they had left off that afternoon - we couldn't find any data loss at all.

I will forever bow in deference to the greatest server I have ever had the pleasure of working on. How HP managed to acquire such a legacy and turn its back... part of me cries inside.

Duh?

I think the question is whether or not you trust iptables to be the firewall, or whether or not you have a dedicated device as a firewall.

  Sadly, as a security device, dedicated firewalls are their own can of worms. For example, firmware updates for dedicated firewall devices are often much less frequently issued, and the update process is typically far more painful than you'd see as a mindful admin for a Linux box. Many "dedicated firewall" devices are little more than Linux + iptables + proprietary interface anway, meaning you aren't protected at all if there's a common kernel flaw found. Lastly, being heavily stripped down, you have no way to audit them to see if they *are* compromised, because half your toolchain is missing even if you do have shell access, even though, as a full-fledged, turing complete computing device, they are quite useful to a black hat.

All that said, I do frequently use dedicated firewalls, but also use locked down Linux servers interchangeably. Given the 10+ years of excellent security track record I've maintained going this route, I'm pretty confident this doesn't mean I'm incompetent, as would seem to be the opinion around here.

I am a bit paranoid about security, disabling password access anywhere possible, relying on default-deny firewalls, using port-knocking & non-standard ports for SSH, not using non-ssl connections for *anything* administrative, VPNs required for access to insecure services like IPMI, etc.