There are lots of solutions:

• JetDirect - print server listens on a TCP socket, clients treat the socket the way they would a serial port with the same printer model attached. No job management or anything, but very simple to implement.
• AppleTalk PAP - printer requests data from client as it needs it, client polls printer for status. Printer status and job management are done in a standardised way for all printers. But it depends on obsolete protocols.
• lpr/lpd - the UNIX equivalent to AppleTalk PAP. Runs over TCP/IP, provides standardised printer status and job management, easy to proxy/multiplex, supported out-of-the-box on most modern operating systems.
• Windows Printing - kind of like AppleTalk PAP but using NetBIOS instead of AppleTalk. All the printer status and job management functionality, but a bit cumbersome to use. Works well on OSX and Windows clients.
• IPP - a "modern" HTTP-based printing protocol. Should do anything the other solutions can do, but better. Used by CUPS, and supported on Windows since Win2k. Also used by iOS for printing.

As for standardised printer control languages, there's HP PCL (printer can be relatively dumb), HP-GL (vector protocol really intended for plotters), SPL (Samsung's equivalent to HP PCL), PostScript (requires fairly heavy runtime to render), and PDF (declarative page description language). A print server should be able to handle at least one of them.

The way it used to work was there were "workgroup printers" with a built-in NIC and print server. They'd usually be able to interpret PCL or PostScript so anyone could print to them with a driver for one of these languages. But they were expensive.

So you could connect a printer to a computer and get the computer to act as the print server and share it on the network. If you had a driver for the printer on this computer, you could make it translate PCL or PostScript to the printer's (probably proprietary) native language so clients still wouldn't need a special driver, only the print server would.

But using a computer as a print server looks overly complex, so you got dumb print server boxes. You can't install fancy print drivers on these boxes, so they just proxy a TCP port to the serial/parallel port the printer is connected to (JetDirect). Each client needs drivers for the specific printer(s), and it prints as though it had the printer attached locally to a serial port.

NetUSB is the next step in this devolutionary chain. It's like the dumb print server adapted to USB rather than serial/parallel. The client machines have a driver for the specific printer(s) and the USB I/O is redirected over the network.

However, if recent history is any indication, Australians like to get screwed over by their government, hence they keep voting for anti-citizen politicians. Must be some kind of collective masochism going on down under.

All our major political parties (Liberal/National, Labor and Green) have anti-citizen policies. Much like the US Republicrat system, while you can choose who's going to be fucking you, you'll still have to bend over.

It wasn't the passenger windows that were the issue, it was a radio antenna window, and the failure was because the window was supposed to be glued in but they used rivets instead, and the fractures started at the rivet holes.

Window blinds have to be raised for safety reasons during take-off/landing because sometimes a passenger will be able to see something important or dangerous. Windows do provide some safety as well.

What's with the outbreak of people who can't spell COBOL? It's like kids are trying to sound older than they are by using jargon but completely screwing it up.

It makes no sense at all if Uber isn't collecting GST. The GST is essentially a value-add tax applied to all domestic sales of goods or services. It doesn't apply to hobbies, exports, and personal imports up to a certain value. But I can't see any way Uber should be exempt from GST. It's clearly provision of a service for money, and hence subject to GST. Yet another way these goons think they can just avoid the law.

Yeah, I've had no problems with Adobe CC either. Don't know what people are bitching about.

Haha try having an office of 100 people trying to work with everything on network drives on a wireless network.

Cisco's VoIP desk phones are very popular. It's great being able to run a single type of cabling when provisioning an office.

It isn't as bad as it used to be. There are far fewer security issues found these days, and they don't tend to botch major releases the way they used to. However it's succumbing to bloat, each release bigger than the last.

It only applies security updates automatically if the user the PHP scripts run as has write access to the WordPress directory. I never allow that. I'd rather have the security of knowing a WordPress exploit can't modify the WordPress installation than the convenience of updates through the web UI.

This latest exploit also depends on a logged in administrator viewing the malicious comments to do the really nasty stuff. This is another very good reason to only ever log in as an administrator when you absolutely must. Use a non-admin user for writing content and moderating comments.

Compile time is important - you can be more productive if your edit/compile/test cycle is faster. This is especially true with test-driven development.

I know I should've expected it given it's on medium, and it's been submitted to /. by its own author, but that's a really bad article. It's full of irrelevant details, stupid comparisons and misleading crap. I understand the concept of "science evangelism" but could you please do it without acting like a total buffoon?

This is where the world is going with per-application library installations on Windows, things like Docker on Linux and application bundles containing libraries/frameworks on OSX. It guarantees that you don't get unexpected application breakage on a library update, but in means a library update requires work for every application using it.