The child porn blocking is enforced only on DNS servers. It is not mandatory, so ISP may opt not to block traffic. And of course you can run your own name servers (provided your ISP does not block port 53) even if your ISP blocks child porn.

I would assume in "circles" it is known how to circumvent this blocking. And I guess many will use TOR or some VPN to hide their tracks. DNS-level blocking just makes it more difficult to police to pick the "easy ones" who would not use any hiding techniques if everything would just work by default.

And DNSSEC breaks with DNS blocking, as designed.

Many of those who are participating have experience on writing commercial i.e. closed text books and the work estimate is reasonable. With that group the amount of work done in a weekend is the same or larger that is done by the author on text book. Probably part of illustrations and editing work made by publisher will be missing by end of weekend. The text and content looks reasonable as I just pulled it from github and compiled.

There has already been lots of discussion in local media "those are stealing money from publishers", "how they are going to get living" and usual stuff related to open source software. And that is a good thing - specailly becase crowdsourced and crowdfunded language teaching book was killed by authorities.

The fact is, that only very few text book writers earn living just by making text books in Finland. If you have only a about 5 million speaking Finnish, you do not sell many books even if you get manage write a bestseller for elementary school. This book is for the first course in high school "long" mathematics, that is taken only by about 10000 students annually. In addition, aftermarkets are quite active, so at best one is able to sell 5000 books - and of course that is divided further between different publishers. Taken that writer gets some 2 € for a book, it is easy to make then math - annual salary for qualified high school math teacher (15y experience, additional education; i.e. one that would be able to write a book) is 50000 €. And typically there are at least 3 persons sharing the profits, so after marginal taxes one may afford to pay holiday flight tickets.

I, as a father of 3rd year high school student, would have welcomed this three years earlier.

And of course forgot configuration at server end; in /home/bupups/.ssh/authorized_keys there is a line for each host:

command="BUP_DEBUG=0 BUP_FORCE_TTY=3 bup server",no-port-forwarding,no-agent-forwarding,no-X11-forwarding,no-pty ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC...

Earlier I used backup2l to first make local backup and then rsync to server. The only problem was it was wasting disk space on each host, specially laptops.

Recently I moved to bup, provides more efficient backups with very small local storage. Now I have in every laptop, desktop and my email server (all running either Debian or Ubuntu) in /etc/cron.daily/bup-backup:

#!/bin/sh
echo Backup starting at $(hostname) $(date)
bup index -u /var/mail /home /var/lib/mysql
bup save -r backups.example.com: -n $(hostname) /var/mail /home /var/lib/mysql
echo Backup ending at $(hostname) $(date)

Because I do not want remote root logins on my file server at home, there is a need for small tweak in /root/.ssh/config:

Host backup.example.com
User bupups
Compression yes
HostName filesrv.example.com

Now as each system backups to the same bup archive, deduplication is taken care automagically.

Each month I rsync /home/bupups to external USB drive that is stored in different place in case of fire or other mishap it will be protected. At some point I've considered installing a low-power server at my father-on-law place for automated off-site backups; will keep the off-line copy in any case.

Of course, I do not much care about taking backups from movies, music - expect maybe some kids love; but they are already on some USB drive to entertain them while travelling...

At 1997 John Deere developed Plusjack in a venture Plustech.

Unfortunately, it was too slow compared to wheeled counterpart even if it made very little damage to forest floor. But for very sensitive environments a man and a horse are more efficient considering the cost of the harvester. Only 3 units were build, one is at display at Lusto forest museum.

A competitor, owner of Ponsse, Einari Vidgren was claimed to say: "If they make walking harvester, we make a running one".

Maybe in US that would work, but Finnish legal system does know about punitive damages. Victims are paid with actual damages that in some cases can be significant - like young person injured and not able to work on profession she is studying for: damages are amount of salary earned in life-time. But no slap-like damages to customers. Goverment may ask for wrongfully earned money and issue fine.

I do not do that: bash: /etc/hosts: Permission denied

But might try

echo 127.0.0.2 google-analytics.com www.google-analytics.com | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts

if NoScript would not take care of most JS junk.

I thought this is just right the site designer intended http://i.imgur.com/NfvOG.png (with noscript).

Spreadsheets, graphics and diagrams are one thing that benefit from maximal area. However, for other applications I maximise them only vertically, if any. I have configured title-bar double-click to expand window vertically.

Text editors, terminals, email message panels run 80 character wide as they have always been. A browser window where I type this is a bit wide, 1175 px, but it still leaves room for window below be that much visible I would notice if it scrolls. If web page is too wide for it, then C-- few times will make it behave.

On 7" netbook using Ubuntu 10.10 most windows are maximised and there the usage is just fine - expect for those dialogs that do not fit on screen. But if screen size is 1280x800 or better I very seldom maximize windows.

But do you have telephone network to connect modems and does to network extend beyond local central office?

GP sounds like a nice troll. Unless you replace air with 1000-fold more dense material it is impossible to cool a person to hypothermia in few seconds, no matter what is temperature and wind speed are. A human can spend comfortably tens of minutes at temperatures well below 200K even naked (or swimsuit) and this is used to heal pains in rheumatoid arthritis. And as one who lives in north, I can imagine the amount of snow taken air with wind over 30 m/s. Invisible in your dreams.

Same for me, I guess I signed last cheque in 1989, since then it has been cash, debit and credit cards or electronic banking. Buyers of our apartment paid with cheque in 1999, but they were a bit strange in other ways too.

And those are not ones I need to get as dead-tree print imitation. Many regular payments are based on direct payments: I get a notification email week or two in advance and I do not need to do anything to get them paid (except to make sure that there is enough money on account). If there is something wrong with those (so far none), and I want to challenge it I can remove it.

For me that experiment would not work, because about alI physical mail I receive are on physical for a reason.

At least for GSM frequencies: 84 subjects (for total 600 trials) had to guess if mobile phone was on, or if it state changed. If one had 3 out of 4 right, 50 euro reward was given. No-one claimed that, even if there was six persons that told being very sensitive to "mobile phone radiation".

Also some other tests were done about effects on humans, but with no results. Kwon, Myoung Soo: Effects of mobile phone electromagnetic field: behavioral and neurophysiological measurements, PhD thesis.

It is hard to see how maximum 35 degree C water (with 1 bar pressure) could be steam bomb. That is the water temperature I have running inside floors. Even if water coming into heat exchanger may some times exceed 100 C, and you can get seriously injured if you are close to pipe break, I prefer it much to system having flame and exploding gas.

Most of time the heat is by-product of electric power plant, so distributed heating is a good way to improve overall efficiency.

Even if the paint blocks radio waves, it would be usable only in windowless rooms without electricity. Radio waves have a property going where you do not want to, and not going where you want.

For example, I know multiple RF-shielded rooms that were very good when they were build in early 1970s. However, one has no problems using cell phone inside of those. To get sufficent protection to GHz rf signals, you must have proper filters in all wires going to room, including all copper network cables and power lines. Same for all ventilation and doors.

The paint is just the easy part that you can replace with copper plates. The rest is much harder.