That does not remove the fact that there is a use case for the type of user we are that is distinct from a regular user.

For example making a sales site and only making use cases for the people going to buy things does not remove the use case for one that need to maintain the inventory of the site...

> "UI designers", on the other hand, are more interested in creating software that looks "pretty", even if it's damn impossible to use productively

That should not be correct, it that is the case, then fire the guy! The objective of an UI designer is to make the UI intuitive and quick to use. We are talking about testing how fast people grasp the UI, how fast they can get certain things done. We are talking about making use cases, and see how those use cases are met. Eliminating clutter. Evaluating if is it easy or confusing to get from A to B.

Where this often go wrong is in the evaluation of who the users are. There should be use cases for each kind of user we expect should use the system. For an online shopping site that might be "unregistered users", "registered users", "inventory manager", "content editor", "translator", and so on. But when it comes to a "Desktop" application this become MUCH harder...

Try defining all the types of users of a Desktop... What does it mean? In real life, a carpenter or a metal worker would have a clearly different desktop than an office worker, but does those roles translate into computer different kinds of desktops in a computer? Should an accountant be considered a different kind of desktop user than a Java programmer? What about a gamer? Or a sales representative? Does the kind of desktop we have depend upon these distinctions? If not, what is it that does define distinct users of a "Desktop"?

I believe the problem here is that the "Desktop" in general was only an virtual illusion created to make people have a concept to easier associate things in the virtual world to the real world. We create archive folders, drop down indexes and so on. Virtual illusions to make us to associate with things we can take and feel. In several ways we are beyond this now too: we now have use cases for desktop as an assistant for example: get me file X in any of my folders, e-mail, document or whatever. Find me application Y. Read this text loud. Inform me when someone calls or sends a message. Call person Z for me. I mean - do you really want to select the phone application before asking the machine to make a call? - In other words, you do see that this is a newer role of a "desktop", right?

It is indeed confusing and complex, and I truly do not think a group of programmers would do better if they to design the interface by without input from others. I do think it will be UI designers that will eventually figure out of the confusion - maybe realizing that a cell phone is more or an mobile assistant than a desktop - I mean - you wont sit down with your phone and think of it as your desk anytime soon. The question is, how much of the old computer desktop today should resemble a desk, what should now be more as an assistant, and what else?

I can't say I have any modern favorite desktop; as for now I prefer Gnome2 or XFCE on Linux, the early interfaces on Mac OS X 10.4. Hopefully we get the right balance soon.

"is the massive data Siri will collect in the next 2 years â" all being stored in Apple's massive North Carolina data center"

Hu? I am thinking of the consequences of that as something far reaching and that can backfire badly... How is the users private data maintained here? Do you always known when your phone is in "command" mode, or may the phone send what you are saying as if a command unintentionally?

And will it be accepted in Europe that potential unintended voice recording of whatever you or those you talk with say will be stored in North Carolina?

I agree with parent here. There are good reasons when to use Redhat and other good reasons to use CentOS. I think you do a major mistake if the reason you want to choose Redhat in a job is in order to support Open Source. You must make a real business case to justify investing in Redhat here - to support Open Source is not a business decision!

You must for example focus on the potential cost of downtime from one solution over the other. Maybe the solution you build have critical components to the company, where quick patches are essential. Redhat will for sure patch much quicker than CentOS issues like Apache, DNS, and other forward facing applications, and you might be able to make a business case of the value of those days with vs without protection. Of course - if you for example only have an informational site it would be a tough sale... But if your site have thousands of daily users its something else.

Another issue is code review. Redhat has a major QA process, so in most cases you might not need to manually review their patches for your solution. For CentOS you are on your own, so you got to test everything much more thoroughly before doing large scale deployments company wide.

Then you have an entirely different aspect of this all - I did once convince management to use Redhat ES above alternative solutions due to support and our solution did have major exposure from all over the world. But, we started quickly to find that our needs where NOT met with what was certified!!! We suddenly had to have custom installations of Sendmail due to the one included in Redhat at the time did not support keeping copies of all outgoing mail, now we had no longer Redhat support for Sendmail... Then we had to use PHP modules that were not built into Redhat's PHP build... We ended up needing a custom build of Apache, PHP, Sendmail, and much more, and the next thing management would ask of course was:
Why are we using Redhat now? None of our critical solutions have support anymore... Only MySQL and other minor things...

I got a great lessen to learn from that incident and I will not do the same mistake again. I do see when I should recommend Redhat and when I should recommend CentOS for a project today. There are many factors - going Redhat servers are usually for things that must stay reliable - that run quite stable software - and you hardly should touch. It might also be when a good sales argument to your client is that you run on fully certified solutions. Dynamic servers where you are expected to upgrade to the latest and greatest constantly are for sure solutions where you should suggest Redhat to management.

Sit back and review why it is you think Redhat is better than CentOS for this project. If you can't manage to justify it with benefits to the company you work for, then CentOS is most certainly the correct solution for you!

And am very happy. I know three are newer Asus machines that work even better than mine today due to improved dual graphics card support. I usually have my machine running more than 6 hours on battery in Linux! It is rated as 10 hours max in Windows, however I find Ubuntu 64bit overall uses less resources except for when totally idle, and Ubuntu is much more responsive than Windows 7 on this machine!

I typically follow this guy for these machines: http://wiki.daviddarts.com/Ubuntu_Maverick_on_the_Asus_UL30VT

instead of signals transmitted using electricity. That essentially remove surges between your equipment from the equation. I have no longer any count of how many times I have experienced small shocks from connecting an external hard drive with its own power cord to my laptop or desktop. That may not stop, but I will at least know this no longer impact my machine. On the other side - I am not going to run for Thunderbolt until I know the failure rate of fiber cables due to bending etc. vs current USB cables... Especially if the price for new cables is substantially more expensive.

OpenVPN can use any port and is not detected as regular VPN communication, and can thus bypass firewalls that blocks VPN communication.

From what is stated;
1) The key given to the reporter was not the key for the insurance file
2) The Assange had provided a backup method for others to recover the data in the case he was a) killed, b) otherwise rendered incapable to act by other than having the group act on his behalf
3) Whereas it is easy to revoke access to content on a central server, it is impossible to revoke access to a file that cannot be changed (a password can simply not be revoked unless you can write to it) In other words you cannot revoke passwords for content that is available on bit torrent etc.
4) The way encryption usually work is through two sets of keys, i.e. LUKS. The real key is essentially always 512bits, but nobody including you ever use this key - you have a password and a separate key that releases the 512bit key!!!
No, we do not know if there was a second pass-phrase key on the content provided to the reporter, but if it was, having one key which gives access to the full 512bit key and content might be used to reveal alternative keys to get the real key. One of which might cascade to the key used in the insurance file. Which is why it was truly irresponsible of the reporter to publish the key regardless!!! That is as far as I see neglect, and being clueless is under no circumstance justification. Yes, the password could be revoked on access, but any backup prior to revocation can as stated above would retain access with that key whether it is a tape, an USB copy, or bit torrent.

Anyway, it is not for sure there where any alternative keys combined with that content, however, we do know the group had access to release the content of the insurance file in case something did happen to Assange anyway...

That the Insurance file was released on Bit torrent was most certainly not a mistake, however, it will have been a mistake if an alternative key used on the content given to the reporter could cascade to this key somehow. (From what I have learned of the case, I kind of don't think the problem was here).

So that leaves the people who where on the inside with the knowledge necessary to release the key...

Sure, there has been a lot of mistakes happening; we can blame Assange for believing in the fools who left for OpenLeaks. They were likely always the number 1 threat to the whistle blowers: Internals who sabotage, steal and try to destroy the original organization with internal knowledge.

It is hardly 4 months since a panel of 31 scientist came to the conclusion that cell phone radiation increases the risk for cancer:
http://www.cbloomnews.com/TopNews.aspx?Article_id=85332&Cat=5
http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/229054/cell_phones_may_cause_cancer_says_the_who_what_to_do.html

What news are you reading to say "no one respectable has said that for decades"???

We have already been told keeping the antenna close to the ears for long hours can provoke cancer etc. Now getting multiple antennas essentially as close as it is possible to get without an implant. How will this change the cancer statistics etc. in the next few years?

Has safety been considered at all?

"broadcast" require it to be multiple recepients, you cant possibly claim it is broadcast when the channel is only going to one particular destination! See IP addresses: if you send to 0.0.0.0 then you are broadcasting to everyone, 1.1.1.0, then you are broadcasting to the 1.1.1.x subnet containing 255 ip addresses, but if you are sending to 1.1.1.1 you are NOT broadcasting but sending to one particular recipient!.

What licenses do you need to open a regular video store in USA renting out physical media like DVD's? This store is after all only renting out physical media to the client where the delivery is their physically rented player as the delivery address. Does really the movie studios need to authorize every single video store?

What I understand they where not authorized to was renting movies over the Internet, but they technically are not doing so.

Lets say you are having a dedicated or virtual dedicated server with your hosting provider. Are you or the hosting company responsible for the content you store on your dedicated server? Are you allowed to store proprietary software on this server rented at the Hosting provider by sending the software by DVD to them? Lets say for an instance that the DVD contain the phone catalog with relevant software licensed by the phone company for one machine that must have the dvd in the player at all times. Is it legal to place this on your dedicated server with your ISP? Who needs to buy the license? Who is responsible?

Lets say you sent a video DVD to your rented dvd-player at your hosting company. Who is responsible now? Lets say the ISP place the DVD into your dvd player. That's it. Did it create any stream? No, it did not even start playing!
Now you are logging into your rented server at the hosting company, over a SSH or SSL connection, accessing the dvd player, and initiating a stream to the the remote display which is your own tv at home.

Is your hosting company liable for enabling you to stream something?
Is the movie rental company liable for shipping the movie to the address you specified?
If it is you who is now streaming, is it illegal for you to stream this simply because it is a rented movie despite it only being between your own equipment and you are not broadcasting anything?

From what I can see that is not the issue: They ARE authorized to rent out the movies, what the studios refuse is rending out streaming over the Internet. However, in this case they are:
1) renting the physical dvd's to the clients
2) placing the physical dvd rented into the physical dvd player also being rented by the client
3) providing an interface to use the physically rented dvd player to the clients that lets the end user initiate a stream over a secure connection

Step 2 and 3 is apparently OK if the movie is not a recent one
Step 1 is also perfectly OK.
The problem claimed is that new movies are not physically picked up by the client but is streamed.

As far as I can see, it is not the store who initiate the streaming, but the end user from his rented dvd player... This should be just as legal as streaming the movie from your Wifi enabled dvd player to the TV. What is it here that really makes this illegal???

Last time I checked, If I rent a web server and I create streaming content on it, then it is me and not my hosting service that create the streaming content.

If I now rent a dvd player with SSH or HTTP / SSL connection and I log into my rented box and flip the switch to start a stream, who is it that now create the stream? My service provider or me?

Notice that there is already several DVD players on the market that allows you to output the movie to your TV using Wifi and streaming:
(Example: http://www.amazon.com/LG-BD690-Wireless-Network-Blu-ray/dp/B004OF9XMI )

1) You are renting a video player which is located in the store and provide exclusive access to you while renting through an encrypted virtual interface
2) You are separately renting a movie
3) You ask as delivery method that someone is placing your rented movie inside your rented dvd player
4) You connect the rented player to your display unit
5) You see the movie

Streaming was done by you from your equipment to your equipment. The streaming can in this case not be said to be done by the store, as it is solely initiated by the client from his own rented player with his own rented physical media. I don't see how this can be illegal. Maybe I did not understand it right, and they don't rent the player out separate from the movie? In that case there might be problems...