In banking apps, they still do have holy wars for EBCDIC. Decimal math instead of binary math or (brrrrrr) floating-point math. There are still a lot of legacy systems running multiple levels of emulation, all the way down to 407 accounting machines.

There are times when I use a drive-thru. What I absolutely hate is the delay from the time I order until the time my food is ready to deliver to me. The reason: it takes time to cook. I understand that. So the ability to order "over my phone" means that there is an overlap between travel time and food prep time. So, I get to the drive-up line, confirm my order, pay, and then get the food, all in seconds. Instead of waiting in the car line, engine idling all that time. (No, I don't have an electric car...yet.)

This order-by-phone process has become standing operating procedure for me when I'm getting a pizza, because the 20-minute cook time matches my overall travel time to the pizza place. No time wasted. (No, my usual haunt doesn't have drive-up -- I'm expecting that trend to start sometime, too. If you can have drive-up funeral viewing...)

How about this? You enter the drive-up and place your order, only to discover the two people in front of you have large orders...and all you want is coffee, soft drink, or other beverage. You sit and wait...and wait...and wait. Car idling, of course

It used to be that the fast-food restaurants would prepare food in advance, and possibly have to throw out some of that "spec" food. During rush times, they can prepare some things in advance; during slower times, they don't. I think the "new" way is better in some respects, but it plays hob with wait time.

Could this be a play on the name of the War Games computer, WOPR?

Then how would the baby feed? With his eyes closed?

Editing error -- when I changed one number, I forgot to change the other. Nothing distracts like a phone call from someone both sobbing and screaming, "I need help!'.

I've been using Linux as my primary OS for more than 10 years, and I don't look back. That doesn't mean, though, that I don't have a Windows machines for those few times I need one -- depending on Fedex (nee Kinkos) is a real time waste. But I don't buy new -- the lease-return used computers are quite inexpensive and work for my few needs. (WINE isn't an answer, and I'm not a fan of virtual machines, if I had a CD and a license, the last being more expensive than a cheap used computer.)

Still, I have to eat, and Linux is not the be-all and end-all yet. LibreOffice does about 98 percent of what I need to service my clients, but that last five percent has to be handled, too. If you can enjoy total Freedom, do it. Many of us aren't that lucky. Also, I use the Windows box to do my taxes (US 1040) because I don't trust the "free" solutions yet -- 26 USC, the 10 book-feet of regulations, and the entire bookcase of case law makes understanding tax law hard. You mention Freedom; I want to be free of audits and accusations of tax cheating. So I buy the software, and that software runs on Macs and Windows. "The right tools for the right job." (Why do I hear these words with James Doohan's voice?)

I'm curious to see how the movement to cloud applications is going to change this. I'm already seeing an effect with Google Apps, which I need to use from time to time with some clients.. When Microsoft jumps into that game with Office, I may be able to give the Windows boxes the heave-ho. Maybe.

>The proper file format for that purpose is usually PDF.

I know that. But the customers want editable copies, and do not want to go through Adobe or anyone else for a PDF editor. The customers want Word files. Now, tell me how to educate the customers, when the competition will do exactly what they want and so my client loses business to that competition, and your comment will be reasonable.

Absent that critical step, my hands are tied. And so are my client's hands tied.

"What's broken exactly?" - PRECISELY.

The Red Hat 6.5 implementation does not work as documented. Either fix the code, or fix the documentation. I've not tried Red Hat 7 yet, haven't gotten a round tuit. Ever try to take System V init code and convert it to systemd? I even tried to A/B between Red Hat 5 code and Red Hat 6.5, and that didn't show the rules.

I felt it was enough a problem to submit a bug report to the CentOS people: https://bugs.centos.org/view.p... -- the problem I see is that the documentation for systemd and the observed results are different. Further, there are no instructions on how to take a System V init and convert it cleanly to systemd. I don't have a Red Hat Enterprise support license, so I couldn't report the issue to Red Hat. One of the problem of using an alternate distribution.

To this developer's eye, the systemd documentation is not ready for prime time. Note that this bug was reported against 6.5, not 7. I'll be looking at 7 when I get a round tuit.

I'm sorry to say that, for some companies, there is a value to having a Windows system available. I do part-time IT work for a translation agency, and the vast majority of source documents come in as Microsoft files: Word, PowerPoint, and the odd Excel spreadsheet. I have to keep a Windows 7 computer around to take some of those incoming source documents and "downgrade" the file, cleaning them up of any macro viruses and other similar junk at the same time, so the translators' computers won't be at risk and we don't have to dilute capital by constant upgrading.

These translators do their work with various Translation tools that work only with Microsoft Word, and limited to specific versions of Word. Those XP computers are *not* connected to the Internet -- the translators have separate machines for research, e-mail, and similar -- and those second machines are Macs, not Winboxes. During the next six months, they will be moving to Linux platforms for the second boxes because of the issues Apple has caused with their latest OS upgrades. Churn, churn, churn...

Why not work with LibreOffice? The customer companies are using Microsoft Word, and want their documents to have a specific look and feel as Microsoft Words renders it. "This document doesn't look quite right" when it's created and saved in Libre Office. Running text isn't the problem, it's the graphics in the document: the pictures, graphs, and drawings are out of place. "The customer is always right." But we don't have to upgrade Office everytime Microsoft feels the itch for more money.

As an aside, some of these translator's tools are moving to LibreOffice supporting a handful of Linux distributions. (OpenOffice is...right out. Too much "Oracle effect", although we'll see what the move to Apache Foundation does.) The software is *not* free, nor is it cheap...but a translator's output increases to the point that the software pays for itself in less than a month.

Given the disconnects between the documentation and actual operation, it is a bad thing. At least that's true for Fedora's take on systemd. I tried to come up with a work-alike of a System V set-up script, and found some issues. Yes, I posted a bug report. No, nothing has happened with that bug report.

We'll see if Centos/RHEL did a better documentation job.

Anyone who says that climate isn't changing has their head in the dry dirt of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Recorded history shows clearly that there is climate changes over time. Indeed, climate shifts have influenced man's history more than any other single event source. Scientific evidence shows that climate changes constantly. The problem I have is the intensity which climate cultists point to humans as the cause.

Given that the magnetic poles have been shifting regularly, if slowly, means that the solar wind's interaction with the Earth will change as the magnetic field moves. ("Settled science"? I haven't heard any nay-sayers.) How about the argument that carbon dioxide has been "building up"? Yet one study I finally found, that looks at wider time periods than a century (http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html) suggests that (1) temperature has no significant correlation with CO-2 content, and that we are coming out of a period of low CO-2 concentrations.

Does this mean that man is completely blameless? No. Temperature is a function of released energy, and the Earth had stored sunlight for millions of years. We are releasing that stored sunlight at an increasing pace, which eventually ends up in the atmosphere, one way or another, as heat. How much is due to technology, and how much is a by-product of man's actions such as the clear-cutting of Amazon rain forests and covering the land masses with asphalt and concrete, and how much is caused by other, non-man-made changes? So the question is whether the existing natural system for expelling heat are up to the task. More importantly, details are important. How much heat does technology dump into the atmosphere? Clear-cutting (and clear-burning) of land? Other sources? Without numbers, everything is just opinion. And when it comes to such "science", one option is equally as good as another, absent accurate and provable forecasts -- I believe that is why the climage deniers hold to their beliefs. Cultists haven't proven their case, or even shown their case has merit.

Are there other solutions than those proposed by the client cultists? One way to keep heat out of the atmosphere, if that is the goal, is to keep sunlight reaching ground level from being converted to heat in the atmosphere. Photovoltaics can help, although the energy would be released -- just perhaps in a different spot or a different time; the benefit would that such energy would displace energy released from fossil fuels -- current sunlight instead of ancient sunlight. Ditto solar thermal power plants -- using today's energy instead of million-year-old energy.

Sunlight that never reaches the ground can't contribute much to the heat load. How about reflection and dispersion? Some of the energy would be converted to heat by the air itself, but the rest would escape into space in the form of radiation (light, infrared). Another way to trap sunlight so it doesn't contribute heat is to increase the surface area of leaves, to increase photosynthesis -- and that has the benefit of eating up CO-2 as well as keeping heat out of the air. (Cultists: when did you re-roof your homes with grass? It would lower your air-conditioning bills, too, by keeping the heat out of your attic.)

But is that all there is? There is considerable heat trapped in the core of our planet. Further, there are energy sources in the ground that contribute to the atmospheric heat load...but I never see that heat source mentioned in the Climate Cultist literature. What is the effect of volcanos on the solar balance sheet? We know that ash can bring down airplanes, but what is the effect of that ash in the air? It could well be that geothermal power generation, replacing fossil-fuel generation, would be an excellent way to keep the atmosphere in thermal balance. Don't hear much about geothermal from climage cultists, do you...

I was part of the generation that "grew up with the Bomb" -- and I remember all those discussions about "nuclear winter" that would be brought on by The Ultimate War. Block enough sunlight, and you drop world temperature. But you won't like the side effects.

And so I come to the end of my thoughts on the subject. If you have faith that we "need to do something" about the problem, show us your work, your accurate predictions of change, your proofs. Instead of trying to make us "believers" by trying to evangelize your faith, show something that can be vetted by the scientific method.

I used to run the abuse desk at a web hosting company before I moved on to automation control. Our company developed a procedure -- and published it -- to handle takedown notices. First, the notice has to be sent to the contact on record with the copyright office, that's part of the law. That meant it came directly to my desk. Further, the person submitting the notice had to provide some proof of copyright. Finally, the notice author has to demonstrate that the infringement didn't fall under fair use, or some of the other exceptions.

I then investigated the claim, and if I felt there was reasonable cause for the claim I would take down the site and notify the allegedly infringing customer of the notice and our analysis. The customer could then deal with the copyright owner and then the two parties would let us know how it's resolved. Or the customer could remove the infringing material (they still had access to the data even when the site was shut off), let me know, then if I was satisfied that the infringement was removed I'd turn the site back on, and let the complaining party know what had been done.

There was the case of a person whose site sold knock-off watches. The original manufacturer took exception to the pictures on the site, claiming trademark infringement (which was pretty obvious). The customer took the pictures off. Case solved.

Then there was the customer who posted MP3s of music. That was a no-brainer. We terminated him for violation of the acceptable use policy.

There were some trolls, too. One customer had material under copyright, but the customer's use of the material fell under fair use. The troll could not demonstrate how the infringement went beyond fair use. He threatened to sue. Our lawyers took that threat and ran with it -- replied with a threat to counter-sue.

So different companies have DMCA policies and procedures. It helps to look what they have in place.

How critical is the bug for the particular server? That will vary. For example, my little mail server is running CentOS 4, and does not have the HeartBeat "enhancement" because the updates to that particular distribution stopped before that little throb was introduced. (Sometimes is pays to stay away from the "bleeding edge" of progress!) Yes, it's time to upgrade, but I'm taking my time and doing it slow, because I want to use CentOS 7 when it's released. I'm replacing hardware, too, and I'm testing that hardware before I place all my marbles there. (Not that it matters much.)

Also, I have SSH locked down to specific IP address, no Web service of any kind -- indeed, it's a "mostly closed" system with public-facing holes only for SSH (limited by tcpwrappers), SMTP (not SMTPS or SUBMISSION), DOMAIN (severely rate-limited and with blocks for ANY), NTP, and TRACEROUTE. This effectively blocks any access to heartbleed.

When the first alerts came out, the first thing I did was run the web-based exploit detectors. They didn't get through. At that time, I reviewed the services not blocked by the firewall, and to the best of my knowledge, none of the services I list above use the Secure Shell library. So I satisfied myself that my mail server was tight.

Everything else on my network is behind the same firewall, using NAT to gain access to the outside world. There is no open path to my desktop computers or internal-only servers.

I'm very much of the school "if it ain't broke, don't fix it in a hurry." In my case, I'm rebuilding servers (some celebrating 10 years of service or more) with the latest proven software one at a time, with the mail server being last in the chain. I'm replacing hardware as well as software, one by one. (I'm probably going to update the old hardware so I have standbys if the new hardware experiences infant mortality, but that's a detail.)

So, in come cases carefully researched, there isn't any need to take action against Heartbleed, because the exploits are blocked upstream.

I will believe the science is settled when the journals that carry articles about climate stop rejecting articles that are not "in line" with the alleged settled science, especially those articles that are brought forward by scientists who don't put the word "climate" in front of "scientist" or "researcher" when they describe themselves.

"Science" is about exploring boundaries and ideas, and a "memory hole" has no place at all in science. "Science" is about evaluating the data and resulting theories, not the person bringing the data and theories forward. "Science" is about recognizing new facts and incorporating them into existing theories...or throwing out the old theories when the new facts require those theories to be stretched all out of shape to shoehorn in the new facts, much like politicians gerrymander the boundaries of voting districts to achieve a desired result.

Why have the various predictions been so drastically wrong? That says the science is not settled. If it were, the results would better match the predictions. Especially the doomsday predictions. Not to mention the flip-flops between "global warming" and "global cooling" -- how does the settled science square with those changes in view? I'm reminded of the boy crying "Wolf!"...

I agree that there are trends in temperature change that needs to be watched closely, but I disagree that there is one "magic" solution. Indeed, I look at reduced industrial CO2 emissions as only one of many things we should look to do. For example, have you considered growing grass on the roof of your house, and on the body of your car? How about roofing over car parks, and growing plants on them? Have you looked into dense, CO2-consuming flora on the top of your office building? How many trees have you planted on your property, especially large-leaf ones?

"Climate change" is not a "Someone else's problem" -- it's YOUR problem, too. Why do I see lots of talk but little personal action? Show us how to solve the problem, don't just say "you do it."