The entire circumference of the globe is about 24000 miles, which takes light 128ms (in a vacuum). The article's claim that the current time to send a packet from London to Tokyo is 230ms therefore seems doubtful. In this time, light can go 42840 miles in a vacuum -- or nearly twice around the the entire distance around the world (24091 miles). Light in a fiber is about 35% slower, but this still leaves time for 37177 miles.

My Thinkpad T410S has big black plastic areas above and below the screen, and a speakers positioned on the sides, i.e. the screen is wider than the keyboard, and isn't tall enough to fit the form factor. This is 16:10 aspect ratio -- the new models are 16:9 which is even worse.

Glossy vs. matte is a minor issue compared to the ever-widening aspect ratios. Except for watching movies, the usefulness of a screen is determined by its vertical size. The 4:3 aspect ratio is by far the most useful. 16:10 is dramatically worse. 16:9 is an evil plot to prevent computer users from doing their jobs. Yet, the LCD industry is increasingly cranking out displays that are wider and shorter. The pinnacle of laptop displays was the Thinkpad T60's FlexView (aka IPS) 1600x1200 display. It's all been downhill since then. Interestingly, though, Apple seems to have figured this out. The 4:3 aspect ratio IPS display on the iPad is gorgeous -- and the right aspect ratio. The iPad display is a classic example of what makes Apple successful -- they push component manufacturers to produce what consumers desire, as opposed to assembling the cheapest components into an cheap, inelegant commodity product.

College want their admissions process to become a proxy for due diligence in hiring. ("Sally went to XYZ college, so she's more likely to be a valuable employee than Bob who went to a less selective school.") While this makes sense a little bit, it's also scary. For example, does this mean that what kids do in high school will increasingly set their destinies for life? Are XYZ graduates actually better employees, or is it just marketing?

I was intrigued by the ./ posting, which claimed that the tutorial would show how to exploit any NULL pointer dereference. The actual article, however, requires a CALL to the NULL pointer. While some NULL pointer bugs are function pointers, many are not. Kernel code that merely reads or writes data to a NULL pointer will not be exploitable as shown.