Events around NSA, Snowden etc. bring whole new dimension to playing Splinter Cells and watching Person of Interest. It's always interesting when scenarios that were "what if" during the time game or show was made actually meet reality. "Told you so!" syndrome?

Does Icahn know about the buyout already?

Indeed, "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" sentence can be read by any automaton, if you call their outsourced helldesk.

Do you have any local hacker/maker space nearby? May be great and practical way to get introduced to tech and engineering.

I have always thought it's Russians (former ostblock eventually) who can outdrink anybody in the world.

Does the work get done by those salaried employees? Because that's all that matters. If it does, what's the problem they take hours in breaks? They may be reading e-mails and chasing up stuff at 1am in bed from issued Blackberry while you're happily sleeping. This is significant for many IT professions, I used to wander around office when there were days without too much of actual work besides preparations, but then hell broke loose between 1 and 4 AM during migration.

Yes, I used to use denyhosts, it's a great way of blocking unwanted login attempts. There are databases that people share and you get your hosts.deny updated from internet. You just have to type your own password correctly :-) Or use keys.

There is a myth about computer being magic device that amplifies stupidity and causes normal intelligent people loosing common sense when they sit in front of it. True fact!

Maybe that's because of amount of knowledge and information and everything in this rapidly developing industry? 25 years ago it may not be that hard to absorb most of the knowledge when it came to computers (you know those cliche pictures of men in white coats running around computers the size of cabinet or boys programming first software in garage on Amigas), Turings etc. were basic of all, but now - what would you consider being true computer science? Designing hardware? Microprocessors? Algorithms? Programming? Networking? Which field or technology in networking? Systems administration? Even project management? It's too much diverse today.

OTOH I am glad /. informed about this, at least I know which shortcut URL to avoid and installing noscript in browser was useful. Because this says willing participants - b ut you never know how many will be unwillingly ddosing from some other sites using this technique.

Yes, there is some sort of trend - whatever gets "invented" in US, EU takes it, screws it in it's own way and applies it. Meh.

...and the use of rubber-hose cryptoanalysis will go up.

When you die, biology and chemistry takes care of your body. Desperate, huh? People realized this, therefore created "there has to be something beyond", afterlife, energy beings, heaven, hell, etc. to make it more bearable. Then built whole system around it, based on "what you do during your life ... and here you have religion :-)

Excuse me, I have a question regarding free speech: what's this article posted while ago exactly about? http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/12/03/2326207/Graduate-Students-Being-Warned-Away-From-Leaked-Cables

I don't need wallet for tracking transactions, my mobile serves the same purpose when it receives notification from bank. And yes, it buzzes too :-p