If you like Ubiquiti you could look at their Edgerouter Lite. I'm real happy with mine. $100 and it'll outperform monowall and pfsense on way more expensive hardware. With a basic NAT setup, plus SPI firewall (the basic "permit established and related, drop others" rules) I've measured it at over 500mbps throughput. It probably would do faster, it's CPU wasn't fully loaded, that is just as fast a test server as I could easily get to.

Now of course it is more on the routing, less on the firewall n' such so if you need powerful firewall config, it isn't as much your thing (and won't get as good performance). If you load it down with too much stuff it'll slow way down, particularly since part of its speed is derived from hardware acceleration on its chip, so if tons of stuff is hitting the software it won't be as fast.

Just another option to look at.

In terms of the realtek chips, ya it sucks but it is what you get for the price. Intel NICs are expensive, because Intel knows they are worth it. They charge more for their chips than other vendors by a good bit, so you don't see them in cheap solutions.

Per facility is not really useful, you really need to know the cost per beer. i.e. if a facility makes 13 billion cans of beer in a year, $13 million is a 0.001$ increase per can--yawn.

I actually do have almost 200 hours in community service, but almost all between high school and grad school. I volunteered at hospitals, homeless shelters, and habitat for humanity. Since becoming a professional, though, I have little time for that now. What's most disturbing is that I've now become more libertarian, i.e. disgusted that I have to pay so much tax for socialist services after having spent the entirety of my 20s in CS degree programs.

You might want to add, "I am not an economist but..." before you write these things. "which may mean lower profits, leading to reduced employment" is as ridiculous as saying that adding a powered usb port will draw less power from your CPU and speed computation.

We have no idea what this will do for employment, there's simply too much going on. Increasing beer prices ever so slightly (I doubt this adds more than a cent or two per can, but whatever) would decrease beer consumption (also ever so slightly) and might increase productivity in other industries. Also, increasing food safety could decrease time off economy wide. It's impossible to know. But I doubt any effect would be large.

Most of that is east side & Brightmoor. Midtown & downtown is like the burbs, gangs & thugs don't like take chances there. Wayne State, MSP, Sherif, Federal & Detroit highly visible there.

Wow, it sounds like you are about to cry. Don't worry, you still are an idiot who's racist hatred has usurped reality leading you to validation of your own concocted feelings.

As I said, the issue of citizenship was brought up by hillary supporters in the primaries. McCain, who by your own admission, went straight to the front disclosing everything possible and his citizenship question (which has been questioned before and vetted) was settled quickly. Obama on the other hand, attempted to fight releasing anything substantial and put up this "its because I'm black" front and it continues to this day with useful idiots like you running around saying it's because he is black.

If Obama would have acted like McCain and simply released everything in the beginning, the entire birther movement would never have surfaced and you wouldn't have anything to cry about right now. You say that there was no serious inquiring into McCain, but the fact of the matter was that McCain released everything so there was no time for conspiracies to pop up about why he refused to release any information about his qualifications to be president.

And as for the Hillary supporter, you are correct, a private citizen can do anything they want. But that doesn't detract from the fact that the birther movement was born there with Hillary supporters trying to disqualify Obama from running against Hillary in the primary. Obama could have completely ended the fiasco right then and there by showing his birth certificate like McCain did but he needed the conspiracy to grow in order to create useful idiots like you and the parent poster so that he would have tools running around defending him and yelling racism as if it is a magic word that somehow validates everything you ever knew or thought you knew.

So how does it feel knowing you are a thoughtless tool being puppeteered around by people you think you trust?

Earth has been impacted by asteroids in the past, so there's nothing to worry about. It's just a natural phenomenon. Besides, the people saying we should be looking for asteroids are just greedy for grant money. If it turns out the be a real threat, I'm sure the technology to deal with it will magically appear -- with the economy the way it is we can't afford nonessential projects now.

Remember how silly these arguments sound when applied to other potential problems.

If by cool, you mean too hip to post much, I feel you.

Take off that mask Alpha Charlie, we welcome your traitorous ass back in the fold.

What did work out incredibly well for me was moving in with other students. Not only do you get to have some kind of company without "wasting time" on it (and no matter what you might think, you need people to talk to or you go nuts), it also means that you can much more easily stretch the food money. Cooking for 3 is more efficient than cooking for 1. And more fun too (unless you have a weirdo like one of my former roomies who has a ... let's say rather special taste. I still say he only did it 'cause he wanted to avoid cooking duty). It also takes less time if you split the housework.

We still come together every other week, one of us cooks and we chat. It's a nice little reminder of our university years, despite us splitting up and moving apart (still within driving distance, fortunately), one of us having a family now, the others engaged or divorced... it's nice to see people you know develop and it's interesting to see how things turn out.

Seriously, unless you absolutely cannot stand people near you, share an apartment with two or three others. Life gets a LOT cheaper that way and you actually get to stay in touch with humanity despite studying.

"something mysterious will happen to Kim Jong-Un". You mean he might get a decent haircut?

We have Camra in Canada too and with the same aims.

Great Cesar's ghost! You're against a government regulatory effort!?!?* Surely that must be a sign of the apocalypse! And during a blood moon to boot.

*And when did usefulness or futility become a concern?

NASA is paying for Dragon missions to the ISS, not just mass to orbit. They're getting a lot more than the launch: delivery of a Dragon loaded with supplies to the ISS, a brand new man-rated spacecraft that people will be working inside while it's at the ISS, return of more payload to Earth than any other option currently available, and operations in orbit and recovery. And probably also various other expenses and extra work involved in working with NASA and the other ISS partners. Their defense launches are also priced higher for the same reason, working with the DOD involves extra work that the customer demanding it has to pay for.

In a lot of the EU, students from other EU countries don't have to pay tuition fees. Foreign students? Not so lucky, and language doesn't matter. If you aren't from the EU you pay increased fees. For example in Sweden you pay about 15,000 EUR/year for a science degree. In terms of language, you have to already demonstrate a proficiency in English and Swedish just to be able to get in.

Also all of this assumes you can get a visa and get admitted. People from other EU nations, no problem, you can live and work anywhere in the EU, that is a big part of what the treaty means. Non-EU individuals have to get a student visa, the requirements of which vary.

And of course none of that deals with the cost of food, housing, transport, etc. You are on your own for that, barring a scholarship.

This is a subject I have more than a passing familiarity with, as my sister is currently working on her PhD in Europe (at two universities, one in the EU one outside of it). She got a generous grant that pays all her tuition, living expenses, and even some extra but that isn't what all students get. It wasn't as though she just walked in and said "I'd like to go to school here," and they said "Certainly, please come for free!"

Also she even had an easier in than many: She and I hold Canadian citizenships. Canada is a commonwealth country and England is in the EU so that makes a lot of the visa shit way easier than it would be for an American, not that it wasn't still a big production.

It is exceedingly narrow-minded to suggest that an American should just "Emigrate to an actual civilized country instead of a pretend one," for school, as though such a thing were trivial to do and people only did not out of ignorance (not to mention the misplaced cultural supremacy of the statement). No, it turns out that you can't just graduate from an American highschool and say "Well screw the US, I'm off to Europe!" and walk in and go to school for free.

Counting you it still got in before 30 posts.

The great Godwin of my age.

That wound will never heal. I will carry it the rest of my life.

Well, that's the difference between universities in the US and around here in Europe. There, you have to be rich to get through. Over here, you have to be smart, because universities can afford dropout rates around 90-95%.

Tuition is cheap (and if you're halfway intelligent, free) around here. So, as one may assume, the auditorium is packed in the first semesters. I mean literally. Get there early or you won't even get to stand on the stairs (to get a seat, you should be in at least an hour before it gets going). If you want to get into a seminar, camping in front of the place where you get to register might be a good idea. It's not exaggerating too much when I say, the best friend of a new student is his sleeping bag.

That in turn means that tests are brutal for the first few semesters. I do not exaggerate, at least 9 out of 10 students will not even get past the first semesters.

But that also means that everyone, literally EVERYONE who holds a degree from my university is one of the top 5% of the people in the field. Else, he would not have that sheet of paper.

It has nothing to do with being offended. Free speech is restricted all the time

Hate speech, inciting riots, etc.

You're free to say whatever you want. No one will stop you, but you also have to face the consequences of saying those things. It seems like someone doesn't really understand what freedom of speech actually means. That's typical, most people take the self-centered view that free speech means they can say whatever they want without consequence. That's false and has never been true. Free speech only means that you can say it in the first place. You're free to change warcraft to doorcraft and giggle yourself to sleep with how clever you are, but if you infringe on someone's copyright then you have to face the legal consequences of that.

Agreed, you're clearly not a USA-ian. We don't respect authority, here. And we don't really respect people who suggest that we should respect authority. So, go kiss your king's ...ring. Ya, know, I've lost a lot of respect for my country in the last decade-and-a-half, but thanks for reminding me why this is still the place for me and my treasonous attitudes.

Just to clarify, how do student loans work in the US?

In the UK, they're provided by the government, and they don't work like conventional loans. They come directly out of your salary, and only once you start earning a certain amount. Even then, the amount scales depending on how much you earn, to the point where you may never even finish paying it (if you hit age 50 it just gets dropped completely).

Whilst admittedly I still live at home, I can afford a car with literally thousands to spare, and have never met anyone personally who has financial issues relating to being a student.

Based on all of the comments I'm reading here, my assumption is that in the US, student loans work more like conventional bank loans, where repayments are a fixed amount regardless of earnings?

That movie quote popped instantly to mind, but had read the specific quote about the mainland long before I watched the movie. Plus, European Russia isn't... Asia, and you invade it either.

Programs compiled in 1972 still work on this venerable machine last sold in 2006, end of support in 2010.

But that's the freedom of choice! Nobody forces you to choose either or. Some like it warm, others like to eat. You can make that choice individually! That's free market, in a socialist world they'd probably make you eat and turn on the heating. Without even caring whether you want that!

Seriously, wtf is up with people thinking that they should get everything they want all the time?

That's what we call 'entitlement'. It's the confusion of cause and effect when applied to societal systems.

I'm starting to think the increasingly shitty summaries are some form of cry for help.

Of course I haven't actually read the summary so I wouldn't know.

The main VAT rate went up from 17.5% to 21% iirc, but food falls under a special VAT rate of 6% that has stayed at the same level afaik. There is a new "packaging tax" which was supposedly introduced to discourage unnecessary packaging material, but I don't think it actually changed anything except the price.

We had something like 5% inflation for several years in a row around 2000. Many people blame this price increase on the switch to the Euro in 2002, but there were significant price increases in the years before that as well. I don't know the reasons behind those increases. In the years after, we had a "supermarket war" where the supermarkets lowered their prices one after another to attract more customers, which has reduced their profit margins significantly. So that's probably not where the high cost is either.

Even so, there are plenty of tasty dishes you can make from cheap ingredients like carrots, onions and cabbage. Meat is the most expensive ingredient, but you need hardly any meat at all from a nutricional point of view (provided you get sufficient proteins from other sources), so if we're talking about starving students then meat is optional.

We're far from that. Let's take a look at the Income equality by country.

Let's just take the richest/poorest 10% comparison. The US has a factor of 15.9. Meaning that the richest 10% make about 16 times what the poorest 10% make. With this, they're in the great company of splendid equality paradises like Uganda, Georgia (the country, not the state...) and Iran.

There is not a SINGLE European country with a worse ratio than the US. Granted, the aforementioned Georgia along with Portugal and the UK are coming close to it, but none of them is actually WORSE. Most central European (and let's also lump in the Scandinavian) countries revolve around a disparity factor of about 5-8.

That means that we're looking at about three times more equality in Europe than the US.

Btw, the 20% rich/poor ratio doesn't get much better for the US. It goes down to a "mere" 8.9 times more money in the 20% rich than the 20% poor, but it's still more than twice the ratio of Finland and Sweden.

A look at the Gini map also tells a lot (ok, if you know what the Gini coefficient is), with Europe lighting up in green and the US being in a group with such equal rights beacons like China, Argentina or Iran.

It seems you have forgotten or never heard of the fact the allied Arab governments of the Arab states that attacked Israel in 1947-48 ordered Arabs living in what is now Israel to leave their houses and towns so they could kick out the Yews.

You also seem blind for the recurring fact no Arab government wants to admit these well educated Palestinian refugees in their own country.

This all does not make good the illegal settlements the Israeli's continue to build on what effectively is occupied Jordanian and Syrian land.

I remember Alta Vista... the best search engine in its day... now it just redirects to Yahoo :(

The Arkyd project by Planetary Resources has already raised $ 1,505,366 on Kickstarter to put telescopes in orbit to detect asteroids.
https://www.kickstarter.com/pr...

Lets hope everybody shares the same open source database.

Many US universities also offer free public transportation passes as well. But this typically only works well for urban campuses and in areas with good public transportation, which does not describe most of the united states. The oil companies made sure of that several decades ago.

Publishers have American students basically by the balls. The cost of textbooks has doubled and even quadrupled in the 20 years since I was an undergraduate. They'll charge you through the nose for a required textbook, then make a few minor changes to the questions at the back of the chapter, pump out a new edition, and use that next semester, so the buyback/used value drops to practically nothing. And if they don't get you that way, it's the extra fee for "online access" and "online homework". I also see more and more students opting for the "international version", which is basically the exact same textbook but not in hardcover -- it's a paperback. Basically, they know that the USA is the wealthiest nation on earth, and companies intended on milking us for every dime they can get.

BTW; Professors don't buy the textbooks. Publishers give professors free complimentary copies of the "instructor's copy". They also like to wine and dine them to make sure their textbook gets selected,. . .

That's not from contaminated grain, that's possibly related to the use of leftover CORN (not barley) fed to PIGS (not cows) from ethanol producers. Meanwhile, it isn't a human health issue and they found a way to mitigate it. All without any input from the FDA.

The problem with "artistic" blur: shrink the image a bit, and the blur is gone!
(Try it and be amazed).

Hahahaha, but no.

Or better yet leave the resources in the hands of the people that earned them to begin with.

The trouble to learn an unusual language to be able to get free tuition is not worth it, and most of the rest of the ones with the same rules for foreigners have higher fees for foreigners. And none of the languages are common first or second languages, so it would likely take extreme effort to be able to get anything from that "free" education.

I went to a small state college for two years that only had a dining hall. The food was horrible. I only had one other option which was delivery from a pizza/fast food joint. I could have gone out but the weather was either freezing cold or snow/ice was everywhere. Lukily I transfered to a bigger school out west where weather wasn't an issue and good food was accessible on/off campus.

There is no "balance"; you have no moral right to infringe upon other people's free speech because you're offended, feel your reputation has been damaged, or whatever other lazy excuse you use to justify discarding people's fundamental liberties like they're trash. I don't care if you feel it's "lazy" or whatever other subjective nonsense you want to call it; all that matters is free speech.

The key difference is the VAX measure uptime in years.

unless the sensor were much larger. even at fast focal ratios, a cell phone sensor still has close to infinite depth of field if you're focusing on any subject closer than a few inches away. The smaller the sensor size, the shallower the depth of field for a given focal ratio. That's why large and medium format lenses don't have to be as fast as 35mm.