OpenBSD has been designed and built from the ground up to be nearly impervious to malicious intent.

No it hasn't. It gets lots of code audits, which eliminate buffer overflows and the like, but does nothing to prevent properly operating malicious software. You want "trusted" computing for security against internal threats, and OpenBSD doesn't do it. Something like RHEL with SELinux properly configured and working, would offer better resilience to the kinds of attacks in question.

OpenBSD was no more immune to the OpenSSL heartbleed bug than any other platform.

And if you're really paranoid or anal, keyboards are cheap to replace -- or randomly cycle different brands/models/styles of keyboards between a set of PCs at random intervals...

Oh good! Now all I need to do is find a way to insert my hacked keyboard into the bunch from your order, and I can pwn your airgapped network in short order.

Once my malware is in, of course it'll spread over the insecure (no updates for systems on an air-gapped network) private network. From there, it could just cause everything to self-destruct at a prearranged time, or it could start searching for ways to communicate data back to me... be it the disabled wifi on one single machine on the network, or optical, if a machine with a webcam on the internet happens to be facing towards any of the air-gapped systems. Hell, depending on what it controls, you could modulate a tiny amount of information into the power grid output, or similar.

I would have thought some of these should be airgapped for security reasons by design? Is it so hard to go to work these days that you have to hook it up to the outside?

These systems aren't just ignorantly plugged-in to an internet connection. But still, you NEED to be able to input data to them, including software updates, and you NEED to get data out, like real-time status updates sent to grid operators. Having someone typing-in every bit of data won't work, and connecting it to internet-connected systems by any method, such as RS-232 serial or others, or just sneakerneting with USB, DVD-Rs, etc., offers the possibility of hacking.

the CIA once destroyed a gas pipeline in 1982 by hacking malicious controls software into a system purchased by them from canada.

Your summary is just absolutely AWFUL. Obviously, no Canadian pipelines were damaged... Instead the CIA had a Canadian company sabotage their own SCADA software, knowing that the Soviet KGB was going to steal their pipeline control systems, with that software on it.

Secondly, it's a story from a single source, unconfirmed, that has been disputed by others. So it may actually have been shoddy construction, instead of sabotage, which doesn't support your claim:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

now the cows have come home. America is finding itself on the receiving end of increasingly sophisticated attacks

Except the attacks were coming in hard and heavy, long before Stuxnet. It's incredibly ridiculous to claim that nobody else would be doing it, if the US didn't participate... It's just too tempting a target for the Chinese and Russians to miss-out on, and the US allowing itself to fall behind would be disastrous and negligent.

http://www.afr.com/p/technolog...

Its almost like less than 10% of the folks commenting here actually even clicked on the ruling.

But in good old internet style, that doesnt preclude them from commenting and making complete arses of themselves.

I don't blame "the internet", I blame Slashdot. The community used-to be above this kind of thing, and rational arguments, even supporting the unpopular side, would get modded-up and cut-through the noise. No longer.

Years of repeated and endless flamebait stories, with no point nor redeeming value to them, have helped to alienate valuable contributors, and cultivate a pool of noisy and opinionated ignorant flamers. After all, the later probably generate a lot more ad-impressions... Anyone trying to correct the misinformation just adds to the popularity of the flamebait article, and there goes more ad impressions for Dice, who will just keep doing whatever works.

No one is a member of a faith just because they call themselves a member.

In lieu of the organization saying otherwise, yes, self-identification is valid, sufficient, and the only real standard in the west. Unless she gets excommunicated, her self-identification as a Catholic is entirely sufficient.

A core Catholic teaching is that human life begins at conception.

No. "Life begins at conception" is an anti-abortion slogan, not at all Catholic canon, though they do similarly believe abortion is murder. Show me the 15th century tombstones for aborted fetuses...

Not that it's completely different, but the Catholic teaching is more all-encompassing, along the lines of "Sex is only allowed in honest attempts to bear children." If your anti-abortion slogan was canon, then using a condom (or other contraceptive that prevents initial conception) would be perfectly okay... but it is not.

"Thou shalt take the virgin with the fear of the Lord, moved rather for love of children than for lust, that in the seed of Abraham thou mayest obtain a blessing in children."

And while important, I wouldn't call it a "core" belief, on par with, say, monotheism, heaven, hell, etc, Ask a few Catholics what they think of Purgatory, or any of the less significant canon, and you'll always find a point of contention with the church, somewhere, with every believer.

Anybody want some real classic machines that have been in-service since the 80s? I've got about two dozen, and it may be a good time to start unloading them soon.

Pac-man, Ms Pac-Man, Centipede, Choplifter, Galaxian, Street Figher 2, etc.

Anybody got tips on unloading them? With something like eBay, it seems you either limit yourself to a tiny fraction of the audience for local-pickup only, or freight charges can dominate the sale price.

For anyone thinking about it, they're simpler than computers, and not too difficult to repair. The monitor caps seem to be the first thing to go, either suddenly a blank screen or just stretched beyond recognition, but a repair kit brings the picture back to normal.

No, it's basic human nature to kick the can down the road, nothing exclusive to politicians. Look at things like IPv4 space exhaustion - we're still kicking the can down the road right now and we'll continue to do so until it becomes so painful we reluctantly start transitioning stuff to IPv6. Same for fossil fuels, "conventional sources" have already peaked and the cost of energy is just going to go up, but we will do the minimum possible and kick the can down the road until it becomes so painful we're forced to change.

Lots of people predicted it. I'm not entirely familiar with the US housing bubble, but in the UK the bubble collapse could be seen from a mile off. I remember yelling pointlessly at the radio when someone from one of the demutualized building societies was trying to justify lending an even more stupidly massive amount of money to people charging interest only "because we want to make property affordable" when it was doing the exact opposite (fuelling the bubble and making it more unaffordable). I also remember discussing it with my Dad on numerous occasions who had got caught up in all the hype. The problem is people got so greedy (both banks and customers alike) with the banks breathlessly falling over themselves to give people mortgages on ever more unsustainable and ridiculous terms, and customers falling over themselves to take them including lying on mortgage application forms, it was obvious that it would only take a slight upset in the economy to make the whole thing come crashing down. It was so blatantly unsustainable. Anyone who wasn't one of the breathless banks or customers could see it coming. The only thing that wasn't entirely predictable was the timing of the burst or the cause of the burst. That upset at least here was skyrocketing energy prices causing all the people who had got mortgages so big they were living paycheque to paycheque with nothing left over to begin defaulting as increased fuel and food costs demolished their non-existent reserves.

You need to read what I've explained to you, rather than projecting your misconceptions onto what I've written.

Large scale pumped hydro isn't needed until/unless the world switches to 90%+ solar. Short of that, all is good. The US DoE has said so, and they know vastly more than you. Solar thermal can have several days of storage. Overnight, existing hydro easily provides the low baseload today, and it can be shut off whenever wind power is producing enough.

Solar IS peaking, because demand follows the sun in most of the world. Industry makes up 75% of demand, and they operate predominantly 8am-5pm, while the sun is shining the most. Dense office environments need air conditioning constantly, even through fall and into winter, and that tracks solar supplies quite nicely.

The research is out there. You don't need to imagine that it won't work. You can search the DoE's website for facts and figures for the US power grid. I'm willing to bet the Germans did research on the subject, too.

I know how the grid works, far better than you ever will, and your misreading or making bad assumptions in what I've written is just wasting my time. You are utterly wrong in most all of your assertions.

Fukushima greatest impact was deaths caused by an irrational evacuation

No, the large swaths of valuable land, left uninhabitable by humans for centuries, is the bigger impact.

Solar+wind means lots of natural gas or coal peaking power plants

That's complete nonsense. Solar IS the "peaking power plant".

solar rooftop joins together the two highest risk professions performed in large scale (roofing and electrician).

Both risks are very easily eliminated by proper regulations, forcing contractors to use proper safety equipment.

Solar+wind+hydro+biomass+geothermal can't run the worlds electrical grid without another 30 to 50 years of scientific advancement.

Also nonsense. In fact solar is the ONLY technology that can supply the projected demand a century in the future. It can supply ALL electrical demands, in combination with pumped hydro for extended solar minimums, without issue, just as quickly as the facilities can be built. Solana is a good model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

The problem isn't having enough panels. Its also not having cheaper/higher efficiency panels.

Baseless crap. The current efficiencies are vastly more than necessary. The numbers have been run by a number of people many times, and only a very small landmass is needed for the entire world's current energy needs.

Its a humongous energy storage problem.

Thermal storage is well understood and has been in-use for years. Pumped hydro storage is well understood and deployed on a massive scale already.

you just refuse to see what is out of tune with your fundamentalist view of things.

That's funny coming from a nuclear zealot, who jumps on anyone who points out the problems with his preferred technology. And who is outright lying with a straight face, about the capabilities of renewables, since their use is cutting in to poor old nuclear power. Boo hoo.

No, Microsoft's domination is down to pure luck.

If Compaq hadn't cloned the PC BIOS, or the IBM PC been a flop, Microsoft would have been just a page in history now along with Lotus, Ashton-Tate and various other software houses that got borged by IBM and other large companies. With no IBM PC, MS-DOS would never have sold much, and would never have been the "Microsoft tax" that bankrolled the first versions Windows and Microsoft Office. Even Intel might be a secondary player today, it may have been Zilog who became Chipzilla as they became the preferred supplier for CP/M machines and their 16 bit (and later 32 bit) follow ons, with companies like NEC or SGS or possibly Mostek being where AMD is now as they were Zilog second sources. And Digital Research (CP/M vendor) would be the big bad monopolist instead of Microsoft.

The size and construction of the head probably makes quite a lot of difference. I have an old Dallas D banjo ukulele (a George Formby branded one, no less) and the head had an inner hoop in it which makes the effective area of the head a bit smaller than the entire diameter. As such the overtones are softer and it sounds less "banjoey" (but still very different from a standard ukulele). The other consequence of the banjo uke head is that if you play a chord like F# where one string is not strummed, you need to mute the string that's not played otherwise the head will cause the string to vibrate and make the chord sound awful.

San Onofre was decommissioned for political pressure.

"both reactors had to be shut down in January 2012 due to premature wear found on over 3,000 tubes in replacement steam generators"

You've got a funny definition of "political pressure".

France did nuclear and it works just fine.

Japan did nuclear, and it worked out just fine... until they had problems. Today, with the benefit of hindsight, nearly everyone would say it didn't work out quite so well.

Worldwide, there are over 400GW worth of nuclear generating capacity, while solar+wind worldwide is what, less than 10% that ?

PV panels didn't exist in the 50s. Solar and wind haven't had remotely as long to scale-up. They are now being installed at a break-neck pace, and will eventually dominate.

Nuclear is expensive upfront, but extremely cheap over the 60-80 years a new nuclear powerplant should operate if properly maintained.

Obviously you can't point to any nuclear power plants that have been operational for 80 years, so that's a BS theoretical figure.

Meanwhile, none of San Onofre's three units have operated for more than 30 years, before decommissioning. That's probably a more accurate figure for the life-span of a reactor. So I'd say you'll have to at least double your lifetime cost figures to be accurate.

Solar is an extremely lousy option for Germany.

Nobody mandated solar, people just decided it would work and be profitable. Germany got a lot of wind power built as well, but apparently solar also works well enough to be worth the investment.

The prices for electricity in Germany are insane, but there's no question that they need to get away from reliance on Russian natural gas as quickly as possible, and if solar helps that process along, so be it.