Agreed, I am not giving TOS enough credit. I didn't realize the impact of the influence it had until I read this ...
http://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942461/Star-Treks-Uhura-Reflects-On-MLK-Encounter

> I've found that the "It's my party and no one else is invited" syndrome permeates all too many OSS projects.

In contradistinction to closed source where you can't even fix bugs even if you wanted to?
And where they often don't provide any way to contact the team about bugs in the code, documentation, samples, etc.? /sarcasm Yeah, OSS sure has it "bad".

Now, _some_ OSS projects may have assholes, but at least I can read the source. The flaming "poster" boys Theo de Raadt and Linus Torvalds may _appear_ like jerks but I would rather they stand for something then fall for anything. At least they can _justify_ their opinions. There is nothing wrong with a healthy flame to get to the heart of the issue and put them ALL on the table.

The BIGGEST problem with OSS is lazy developers who can't even provide a fucking README.TO.COMPILE.TXT -- /me glares at you ZFSonLinux (fortunately it was easy enough to compile) ... There are many OSS projects that are too fucking complicated to even COMPILE. If I have to jump through hoops just to even compile the code I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure it out.

> if they could port ZFS from FreeBSD they'd have a winner on their hands

What are you talking about?
  * http://wiki.netbsd.org/users/haad/porting_zfs/
  * http://netbsd-soc.sourceforge.net/projects/zfs-port/

Considering FreeNAS is based on TinyBSD, and ZFS is already available for Linux,
      http://zfsonlinux.org/
Not sure what issues you are having with NetBSD & ZFS.

ZFS for Linux was dead easy to get up and running ...
  1. Download spl
  2. Download zfs
  3. ./configure ; make
  4. zpool import /dev/...

Just pulled in 4x 1.5 TB drives in a 2.3 TB Raid-Z2 pool with ZFSonLinux that had already been setup in FreeNAS.

Do you understand the point and how

a) open-source, and
b) Public Key Encryption

even work?

Concur 100%. One really strong, long, and easy to use passphrase to unlock all the other passwords.

Ctrl-B (copy username to system clipboard)
Alt-Tab
Ctrl-V (paste username)
Alt-Tab
Ctrl-C (copy password to system clipboard)
Alt-Tab
Ctrl-V (paste password)

Fast, Simple, Easy. Can even copy the encrypted password database onto a thumb drive so if it is ever lost / stolen -- good luck "cracking" the master password.

> but stop pretending like the old Star Trek was some sort of masterpiece. It wasn't.

Bullshit. ST:TNG had some dam fine episodes:

11001001
Clues
Darmok
Frame of Mind
Genesis
Identity Crisis
Lower Decks
Parallels
Relics
Remember Me
Ship in a Bottle
Silicon Avatar
Starship Mine
The Drumhead
The Measure of a Man
The Mind's Eye
Thine Own Self
Time's Arrow

> Serious social issues were explored in an entertaining way.

Dam straight. ST:TNG was a good social commentary disguised as sci-fi. The original did a good job too.

That's what the heart of Science Fiction is: Exploring the social consequences, implications and ramifications of how technology effects people's lives. The "classic" Sci-Fi writers (Isaac) Asimov, (Robert) Heinlein, (Arthur) Clarke are some of the BEST _precisely_ because they explored these social issues at a deep level. Great Sci-Fi encourages and rewards deep thinking.

For any series that reboots / remakes / re-cash-grab one would expect a bit more BACK story in the first place. i.e. WHY did Star Fleet invent the Prime Directive in the first place? HOW did they come to that "non-interference" was the only "valid" choice. If you are going to invent artificial rules on xeno-politics then at least treat the viewer as having some intelligence. Hell, if ST:TNG could do it for 7 years, there is no reason why a movie can't. In about 10 years humans will finally meet aliens and we'll get to see some wildly different perspectives on intelligent species communication that will make ST look like a joke / toy in comparison.

Is the new Star Trek a sci-fi? Hell no, not even close.

Is it a decent action flick. Yeah. It was entertaining; if one ignores the one-dimensional characters, plots holes, then mildly yes. There is a time and a place for "dumb sci-fi". The ONLY credit I give to the new Star Trek is that it made it accessible to the general populace. "Coolness" should never depend on "popularity".

Ramen.

What, that isn't a valid pun for Amen? ;-)

> The first amendment is the right to free speech. The second amendment is the right to bear arms.

Due to the 10th amendment those shouldn't even be needed in the _first_place. Thankfully the founding fathers knew that government corruption would screw the people out of the rights they ALREADY have in the first place and _explicitly_ listed them to give them a longer "shelf-life".

> Why do people buy video game consoles instead of PCs

Simple: Ease of use. You don't have to fart around with updating drivers, keeping all the software up-to-date, worry about viruses, performance tweaking, etc.

Remember computing generally falls into 2 camps:
    Simplicity < - - - and - - - > Flexibility

Most costumers don't give a crap about flexibility - they just want something works and is easy to use, ala iOS. Which is a segue to my next point; Tech companies forget the biggest barrier to customers:

      Out-of-box experience

Consoles _used_ to provide a Plug-n-Play experience, as in, just plug it in, and start playing. Once they started shipping with hard drives & broadband access the OEMs and Game Devs have gotten extremely sloppy with their mentality --- i.e. "We can always patch later on day 0."

PC's smoke consoles from a performance and flexibility use but consoles for the most part are just dumb gaming devices that almost anyone can just use; ala the success of the Wii with the older crowd.

> basically no manufacturer conforms to any sort of standardized test conditions when taking those measurements.

So basically they are too fucking lazy. Got it.

Gee, and the scientific community has error-bars and relative error for what reason? Oh that's right, to provide an _ballpark_ estimate for how accurate the data AND measurements are/ This isn't fricken rocket science when every stat such as temperature to the nearest millionth of a degree is required.

i.e. Bike weight: 19 lb +/- 2 lb.

Gee, is that so hard??

Any company that _refuses_ to provide technical specs only cares about thing: Conning potential suckers.

Technically the Blizzard North developers went to Flagship Studios and then to Runic Games (makers of Torchlight) and while Torchlight 1 & 2 copies some of the D2 mechanics IMHO PoE embodies the spirit of Diablo 2 far, far, more then any other ARPG.

i.e. There is NO gold in PoE. It uses a 100% barter multi-tiered currency system. It really is the next gen of in-game economies.

Now if we could only get the Guild Wars 2 Dynamic Events into PoE ...

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flagship_Studios
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_Games
* http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dynamic_event

Well, IPV6 uses 128-bit addresses. That's enough for 2^128 addresse / 2^48 m^2 = 2^(128-48) = 2^80 IP addresses per square meter of the Earth!

Another way to look at how big that is, even with 7 billion people using 32 devices each, 2^33 * 2^5 = 2^(33+5) = 2^38 that still leaves room for 2^(128-38) = 2^90 IP addresses.

I seriously doubt we'll be running out IPV6 addresses anytime soon assuming my back of the napkin math is correct. :-)

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth
The surface area of earth is ~510 million km^2 = 510,000,000 km^2 = 510,000,000,000,000 m^2 ~=~ 2^9 x 10^12 = 2^48

That's a darn good pseudo-quote!

Corollary: Only cowards use censorship.

> Why exactly are we doing that?

Because most problems can be summed up in 2 reasons:

- Greed,
- People are idiots. (i.e. Where there is no vision the people perish. )

If professors would actually WORK TOGETHER to produce ONE FREE textbook then students wouldn't actually be getting ripped off. It is not like the rules of Physics, Math, etc., have changed in the last few thousand years.

This is precisely why Wikpedia is shit. It had the potential to be WHOLISTIC:

* Layman's introduction
* Advanced discussion
* Tutorial
* Examples - including audio, video, textual
* Implementation Details & Caveats
* Reference

I'm still waiting for the day for someone to do an Uberpedia this is a combo textbook+reference ebook properly.