So the SSD firmware knows about partitioning schemes and will make use of the 'unused' space as virtual blocks for the space you are using ?

Have you seen the size of modern game installs ? My Steam install (where most of my games are these days) is 99.2GiB (with individual games like Borderlands over 7GiB, and that's without DLC), and a current WoW install is ~25 GiB (I've still not fully patched up and the new streaming patcher says 1GiB to go with 23.4GiB already used... and it took over 35GiB to apply the 4.0.1 patch).

I'll agree that you don't need 'near terabyte' for games currently unless you buy every new release going. However most SSDs I found on a quick check at www.aria.co.uk were around 120GB for something not stupidly priced, and even those are still around £1.20/GB. A 160GB 7200rpm HDD from there is around 17.5p/GB. 120GB is not enough for me. Before upgrade to Win7 and a 1TB disk I was using a 120GB partition and I had to keep backing up games to my server so I could install new ones.

Until low enough cost/GB SSDs reach around the 500GB level of capacity I don't think they're a replacement for anything beyond a casual gamer.

What? No Auto-load of it on trying to use the protocol it utilises? I ask because the workaround is to turn that particular feature off: echo alias net-pf-21 off > /etc/modprobe.d/disable-rds

Is this allowed by the agreements between such block holders and their respective RIR ? I realise ISPs effectively do this all the time with static IP/network customers, but on the other hand that wouldn't be a portable IP range. In fact I can see network engineers saying "no way!" due to the inevitable increase in router table sizes from all the extra subnetting. I believe one goal of IPv6 was to try and have fewer global routeing entries.

Errr, how do you figure that ?

ISP A client on 10.10.1.1 gets NAT'd to, let's say 23.34.45.5
ISP B client on 10.10.1.1 gets NAT'd to, let's say 12.23.45.7

Where's the problem ? Each NAT'd client is only going to see the already-NAT'd IP of the other.

But I agree NAT should not be considered a solution to this at all. It's a horrible hack to get around not being able to just give every ISP customer a big-enough IPv4 sub-net of their own. The MAC-based IPv6 addresses (or if you prefer the 'private' addresses, but they won't buy a home user much given they're still identified by a /64) and relying on Router Advertisements makes this a non-issue for IPv6 (it's effectively like just using DHCP on IPv4 from your DSL/Cable router is now).

Yes, you need to purchase each expansion up to and including the one you want to play. Buy WotLK now and get up to 80 so you're at least vaguely in place to start on Cataclysm when it's released. You even have time to get some semi-decent gear before the launch.

Yes, you can also still play all the vanilla content and all the TBC content. Some things may have been retuned a bit, and of course you may have no luck finding a raid for TBC content, but it's all still there (yes, this will change somewhat with respect to vanilla once Cataclysm launches, given how all the old world is changing... but you'll still be able to play the new versions of it with only a vanilla account).

This way people can play Arena if they want to (put up with the queues). There'd be more whining if they plain couldn't for X weeks.

You didn't state if your routers have WiFi. That's pretty much what is necessary for this trick to work. My recently bought and implemented WAP does indeed have a geolocation (heck, I uploaded it to Wigle myself), but my nearly 8 year old DSL-only router doesn't, no surprise.

If you know how to drive git you could try applying these:

• commit eefdca043e8391dcd719711716492063030b55ac:
  x86-64, compat: Retruncate rax after ia32 syscall entry tracing
• commit 36d001c70d8a0144ac1d038f6876c484849a74de:
  x86-64, compat: Test %rax for the syscall number, not %eax

there is a workaround of disabling 32bit binaries (I'd paste a link if Google Chrome dev channel would let me... for some reason I can only paste into /.'s comment box before I've typed anything else, I'll follow-up with it), but of course you may need them depending on what your machine does.

There's also a separate issue that also gives local root, fixed by:

• commit c41d68a513c71e35a14f66d71782d27a79a81ea6:
  compat: Make compat_alloc_user_space() incorporate the access_ok()

I'm running a kernel base don 2.6.35.4 but with all 3 of those commits applied (note the last one tries to modify an arch/tile/ file which doesn't exist in 2.6.35.4, just ignore that) and can confirm that neither exploit works.

So, which two words does 'encryption' decrypt to ?

If Facebook works as 'free' then I can see some enterprising people setting up Diaspora hosting on the same footing (i.e. ad and affiliate supported).

Hmmm, I guess we cross our fingers that they'll release a formal specification for all the bits that count so others can reimplement it if they choose?

I have no opinion language-wise for this really, but running on a basic LAMP stack, at least with the A being Apache is a must . I could swallow the megabytes of Ruby gems if needs be, but only if sufficient versions are available in Debian stable. As a sysadmin I do not need any extra headache of trying to keep lots of tiny little packages up to date myself (disclaimer, never touched/adminned Ruby so far... for all I know it has some nice way of doing this...).

*checks the git repository quickly* Ah yes, Debian packaging for Diaspora itself would be nice too.

In typical /. inhabitant behaviour I'd not even read all the summary before commenting...

So, they asked about 'ultraviolent or sexually violent' ? Way to load the question. Of course a majority are likely to say 'yes' just because of the words 'sexually violent' !

So, yeah, even more Bullshit! than I thought.

Anyone thinking such games have a truly adverse effect on more than a very small minority of kids (who likely already had problems) should go watch this "Penn & Teller's Bullshit!" episode: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1471881/

Sadly there's no synopsis or the like on that URL but from memory one thing they did was have a 10 year old who loves playing something like Modern Warfare on his console go and actually shoot a rifle (AR-1 I think). The kid doesn't enjoy the experience at all. Yeah, the games sooooooo made him likely to grab a gun and go on a real killing spree....

This is really just bad wording in his opening paragraph.
Really it's that:

1. 1) The railgun part needs to get things up to 600mph, 10x the rollercoaster speed.
2. 2) Once launched at 600mph off the railgun the scramjet fires up and eventually gets the thing to 'Mach 10'

The Universe Today article is worded a little better: http://www.universetoday.com/73536/nasa-considering-rail-gun-launch-system-to-the-stars/