I'd rather use Fedora 17.

From the FAQ:

It supports the Essex version and will support the next rev when released, but this part bothers me:

"What are the requirements for using the preview software?

A: The preview version of the Red Hat OpenStack software only works with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.3 or higher. You'll need a Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription for each server you install with the Red Hat OpenStack software."

It maybe less work than with Fedora 17- but 17 includes OpenStack and has a how to get started (some bash-ing required).

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Getting_started_with_OpenStack_on_Fedora_17

"Each campus or office got a /48 address block, which meant that it was allotted 280 addresses. In turn, each building got a /56 block of those addresses (or about 272 addresses) and each VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) received a /64 block, or about 264 addresses."

a /48 block is 65536 subnets for each campus. A /64 has 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 IP addresses.

The RFCs on this type of thing are RFC 6177 which replaced 3177 and RFC 5375. For a itworld/usenix article, fact checking is really low.

You should check out the Palo Alto Networks firewall. It does some interesting things, and came to that obvious conclusion a while ago.

And it deals with Port 80 and Port 443 really well.

My other favorite thing is applications- ever try to let ftp through a firewall (or stop skype?)- port hopping, neither a client nor a server, very interesting. Well the PAN stuff has that nailed down- you can't depend on port and protocol anymore, you need multiple ways to identify an app- and it has them.

DD on OSX is what I use.

      1. Download the desired .img or .iso file
      2. Open a Terminal (under Utilities)
      3. Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
      4. Insert your flash media
      5. Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
      6. Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN
      7. Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskN bs=1m
      8. Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes

UTM is a crock. It loads multiple single purpose apps on to a general purpose computing device and then tries to do it quickly.

The best thing in this field I've seen recently is Palo Alto Networks firewall (www.paloaltonetworks.com).

Knows the applications, even web apps. It can tell the difference between Gmail and gchat. Bittorent and wow torrent patching. Can do user based rules when integrated with AD. And can proxy SSL to look in the SSL stream if necessary. Malware blocking, url filtering via subscription. Because ports or protocols != applications and IP address != user anymore.

Either they don't use McAfee secure ( http://www.mcafeesecure.com/us/ Probably the right website, who knows really ), or their own dog food is garbage.

Either way it is bad gaffe. XSS is pretty well known in security circles. And this mistake is a relatively simple one (output validation or output filtering? please. After you read the linked article, you'll be even more sad they didn't catch this.

I hope not. There are a few pieces that are critical in education that are very difficult to do with distance learning:

1- make relationships with students and teachers. Sometimes the relationships with other students or teachers are what makes the difference in life.

2- the moral component is very hard to teach with distance learning. I'd rather nuclear chemistry or even computer science be taught within a moral framework- because it is easy to use great knowledge for the wrong purpose

3- subtlety of expression- sometimes lost in distance learning- actually it is lost in large classroom sizes sometimes as well.

It was actually a pretty good article. I'd disagree with the order, but those would all be on my list.

The summary is:

        * 1. Diablo II
        * 2. MechWarrior 4: Mercenaries
        * 3. People's General
        * 4. StarCraft
        * 5. Fallout
        * 6. Baldur's Gate (and BG2)
        * 7. WarCraft III
        * 8. Battlefield 1942
        * 9. Freelancer
        * 10. Allegiance

I'd like to see that business plan. I suspect if you build it at 250$ the least you could sell it for and not go out of business is 500$. That might be normal.

83% cost of manufacture? At a price point of a few hundred dollars, it is almost impossible to break even, much less turn a profit.

You could survive 80%+ cost of manufacture if you had a very low price point (1$ or less), had no support or return costs, and very low advertising and could sell millions or billions of them. Even then you would want to get down to 50% or less.

I know I shouldn't feed the troll but I can't help it. I can tell you've never used both in more than a cursory way. They have very similar functionality now. Except RPM and yum is actually better with multi-architecture (which is very common with 64bit/32bit mixed on a 64bit system) than apt/dpkg.

And yum is every bit as usable as apt. So I'd say actually yum/rpm has the upperhand until everything goes single architecture again and the migration to 64bit is over. Or if someone fixes apt/dpkg.

On the other hand, for a desktop, the end user should normally never see either. They are likely to see synaptic or some front end.

75$ in 1897 would be a large sum as of recently:

What cost $75 in 1897 would cost $1846.03 in 2007.

According to one inflation calculator. But the linked article as a man in 1989 cursing and that 75$ isn't as interesting:

What cost $75 in 1989 would cost $123.93 in 2007.

As with all recommended books- make sure you read critically:

System and Practice of Network Administration by Limoncelli and Hogan. Not a how to book a why to book. It should be required reading for everyone in IT.
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Also should be required reading for everyone in IT.

If you are a router jockey:
Routing TCP/IP vol 1, by Doyle, covers the IGPs.
Internet Routing Architectures by Sam Halabi

And the new world:
MPLS and VPN Architectures (probably vol. 1 and 2 if you have to do Service Provider or VRF) by Pepelnjak

If you are a sysadmin- you should read every shred of manufacturer's documentation on their website especially the login required. But if you can't always read the installation and configuration guides.

If you are a software dev guy:
Mythical Man Month- Fred Brooks
Peopleware- DeMarco and Lister

It will teach you about the why and how of managing the development cycle. Of course the algorithms and tools, and languages books are important, but so is understanding the development cycle and how the rest of the business sees it.

I wish I had a good intro to business text for the slot to recommend to all the types.

There is Out of Crisis by Deming for managers. I could probably come up with more...