I've found that developers make ridiculously poor system administration decisions. Something that seems acceptable to set up on a development machine is not necessarily something you'd want to do on a production system.

Actually, $1 billion is between 5% and 10% of the states operating budget, and is approximately 50% of their losses in 2008 due to the economy. Hardly a drop in the bucket.

This is exactly the reason Ubuntu has created the LTS release. The supported lifetime of the LTS release is geared towards businesses that don't need to be on the bleeding edge.

I second the motion computing. The ones I've seen at work also include a detachable USB keyboard, so you have a faster input device on hand when it's needed.

Without any complaints from Apple? Are you living in the same world I'm living in? Apple constantly breaks these third party apps with each new version of iTunes. They're like the kid on the playground with the ball, who really doesn't want the other kids to play with it. To play with the ball, you gotta play by their rules, but they keep changing the rules to make sure they win.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning what Palm did. I just don't think anyone is in the right in this situation. Palm has proven it, there's really no reason to have to rely on third party apps to integrate with iTunes, other than that's the way Apple wants it.

It's like I tell my kids: It'd be nice, and I'd prefer it, if they shared, but really, it's their toy, and I can't make them.

Yeah, but it's not the tasing that people remember, it's the physical violence against him.

The other thing is that the Taser works a longer range than the baton, and so doesn't require the officer to put himself into the suspects range. It subdues a suspect faster than the use of a baton, and doesn't have that "Rodney King" stigma attached (though it's rapidly gaining its own level of infamy).

It's got what plants crave!

I plan on passing my slashdot account on to my children. That way, people will see a six figure number and think they're just an old curmudgen and ignore them. Kids need opposition to learn and grow.

Depends on the school. I'm and adjunct professor at a local satellite campus, and I teach the same class every year. The topic is data structures, and not a lot changes year over year when you're talking about something so fundamental. I have changed my curriculum each year, but only because I have yet to find a book that I feel really treats the topic well. Each book has some high points and some glaring low points, but I dream of the day when my lectures actually become somewhat static. I spend way too much time tweaking my lecture notes.

Also, you don't seem to have considered that in some courses, each programming assignment builds on the one before. By posting his assignments, even after the due dates, he may be influencing his fellow students in the follow on assignments.

I mean, he was watching the Bears vs. the Lions. No network should be forced to even touch that traffic.

Obviously, someone didn't look at Dell.com before they posted...

Dell Inspirion mini 9 with Ubuntu linux, and all the above specs: $249

The Windows XP version does come with a hard drive double the size for just $50 more, but notice that is after $25 of "instant savings." Make of that what you will.

Fortunately, the nation in question is Canada...

Actually, I would expect to encounter pockets of super heated gasses riding on top of the magma. I think the point here is that they can punch more holes in and study the magma, which it wouldn't really be safe to do in the crater.