I suppose this was unavoidable once Duke Nukem Forever went gold...

Good news. If you're getting enough exercise, there's a fair amount of research to suggest that you've already mitigated a bunch of health risks that you might otherwise have been prey to if you'd been obese and sedentary.

Also, and apropos to the topic of this article, check out Mike Evans' "visual lecture" on YouTube, called 23 and 1/2 hours.

Red Hat has had a lab-based exam forever. I was certified (RHCE) on RHEL 4, and at the time there was no written component at all: you show up, here's your system, fix it. They gave me a worksheet describing exactly the criteria they would use to check the system, too: when you told the proctor you were ready, he'd run some kind of script, then tell you how far along in the section you had completed successfully. You were allowed to do this as many times as you wanted up until the time limit. The exam took basically all day.

Side note, and file under "I am probably not supposed to mention this": if you are thinking of taking this test, please do not overlook low-level administrative stuff like GRUB maintenance. I observed a guy come in to a system with a misconfigured GRUB. He didn't know how to fix it, and as a result wasn't able to boot the box to fix anything else. Poor guy walked out of the exam after five minutes, having flushed a few hundred bucks down the toilet.

Senator Paul was on his way to a March for Life event, and was departing from Nashville, KN. He was neither detained (although he was prevented from entering a secured area), nor placed under arrest. So I really don't think that there's any violation of section 6 here.

Can we get something clear about this?

Paul wasn't detained. He set off a body scanner, and asked to be rescanned. The TSA said that a rescan wasn't going to do it, and that they would require a pat-down. He refused, and then left.

At no point did the TSA inform him that he wasn't allowed to leave. They prevented him from getting onto the flight for not complying with their security procedures.

I'm no fan of the TSA. But Paul is grandstanding here because the TSA is one of his favorite bete noirs.

What? Are you suggesting that Slashdot moderation was not intelligently designed?

To reiterate what a few other people have already said: a MILS style camera isn't really any easier to use than a DSLR. However, they do tend to be smaller, which can be a big plus when traveling. My main camera is a Canon 5D (first generation), which is a huge brick of a thing. I'm sure I've missed out on getting some great shots because I couldn't be arsed to bring it with me sometimes.

The article you linked to on DPreview is already a better overview than most people on /. are going to be able to provide - just skip to the section on beginner's cameras and pick the one that calls out to you.

But don't do it because DSLRs are big and scary. Every camera you ever have will have the following controls: aperture, shutter speed, ISO. That's 99% of what you need. Go grab a copy of "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson and the rest will fall into place. (Unless you intend to use external lighting, in which case you've got plenty of time to learn that too.)

I'm surprised to not have seen more "OccupyYourMom" jokes.

"I spent last night occupying your mom. She says hi, by the way."

God help them if they play Skyrim. I swear I'm swimming in wolf pelts, fur boots, and leather bracers.

"I fear that high production values and the inevitable sexualisation of the lead characters that a Hollywood treatment brings will destroy the show."

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you... Leela!

(Ha, you thought I was going to go with Amy Pond, didn't you? Too easy. Old school, it's how I roll.)

Man, if only there were a way that we could find out... oh, look! The actual plan, as released by his campaign! Here, take a look yourself, it's not like it's that long. According to the announcement on his campaign web site, that's the plan, "in full."

If his explanation to how to continue providing the "core public services of these departments" is in any way materially different from "the private sector," I'll eat my hat.

Why choose?

Cuts totaling $1 trillion during the first year of a Paul Presidency would be achieved by eliminating five federal cabinet departments – the Departments of Energy, Housing and Urban Development, Commerce, Interior and Education. Cuts of this scale will also be accomplished by a Paul Presidency abolishing the Transportation Security Administration and returning responsibility for security to private property owners, abolishing corporate subsidies, stopping foreign aid, ending foreign wars, and returning most other spending to 2006 levels.

(Note: please don't read this post as an endorsement of the plan.)

So say we all.

Particularly frustrating was the stupid in-game justification for the use of heat sinks. "We figured you were all so unhappy with the delay waiting for your weapon to cool for a second or two, that we'd retrofit it with ammo that you can actually run out of. And we convinced the Geth to do the same thing! Isn't that cool?"

Rasm frasm. At least managing inventory was easier.

Wow, this hits close to home.

I recently left my old position in a very large company, working with some people I really liked, to jump to another division within the same company. My pay, commute, and benefits are identical. But I'm working on different stuff, in support of different products, with a different group of people. And because I'm still in the same company, I hear from my old coworkers daily, and know that they're experiencing a not insignificant amount of pain over my leaving.

I feel slightly crappy about this. But in the end I wound up moving for two big reasons:

1. I was enjoying the work less and less, and felt the need to try something different. (An increasing amount of my work related to tools & methodology and configuration management, and I just didn't find it interesting.)
2. I was frustrated with a career which seemed to be stagnating for the last five years.

I didn't even get a raise out of my jump - you'd be getting a substantial raise, plus a drastically shortened commute. Make your exit as professional and painless as you can, but for god's sake, go.

John, you've managed to defend a point that the GP post doesn't appear to be making.

ElectricTurtle's post comes within a hair's breadth of admitting that mass extinctions are pretty much a given ("Life can spring back from virtually nothing. During the greatest mass extinction, 90% of ocean-dwelling species perished completely. Have you noticed how they're not still empty?") if climate change continues at this pace. I assert that if that's the case, it's odds on that a massive percentage of the Earth's human population will die off as a result. Either ET disagrees with that assertion, or it doesn't trouble him very much. Simple as that.