I would think that anything that has iptables available would work for that. That would include DD-WRT, OpenWRT, Tomato, and a number of others. PFsense I'm sure can do it too, though I'm not familiar with the BSD equivalent of iptables (hell, they may use iptables...). For a great OpenWRT router for under $100, I can say my netgear WNDR3700v2 works wonders, and the usb port built into it makes for handy storage space for installing various programs on the router (I've seen out of date packages for snort and tor, which both seemed of interest. You'd obviously want to self-compile the up to date versions to bother deploying it though). In addition, this setup will also allow you to open a SPAN port, to throw up wireshark or tcpdump or snort, and do packet logging, which may prove VERY handy if you were to be running a Tor Exit node, or just allowing wifi through on it's own, as the logs being handed over (if you were to choose to do so) would be seen as cooperative, and likely look quite good in any possible legal proceedings that may develop.

Anyway, I'm beginning to rant. Point is, OpenWRT/DD-WRT are awesome.

https://www.xkcd.com/5/

I'm going to have to concur on Minecraft as an option (though I'm not sure how well it'll work for your 3 year old...it may take a year or two, kind of depends on the kid). Part of the benefit here is just how extensible Minecraft is, what with things like the Tekkit or Technic mod packs, or the thousands of individual mods out there. At the very core, Minecraft can be played with much like blocks, working all the way up to actual computer programming (the ComputerCraft mod allows programming in Lua, as well as programmable "Turtles", which are essentially robots), and other exercises in logic. Combine that with the artistic design elements (art critics, spare me), and it really strikes me as perhaps the perfect game to give to a small child, at least among those I've seen. Couple that with it being playable on any platform, and even in a web browser, and you've now given your kid a game they can play at a friend's house on their OS X/Windows setup, or whatever else they may encounter (hey, for all its downfalls, Java is still good for SOMETHING...Flash, not so much).

And best of all, it does provide you with an activity you can do WITH your kid, rather than just sitting them in front of a computer and telling them to go be entertained. This in itself seems worthwhile, even if many other aspects are taken away, as most games geared for young kids (or hell, kids that are under 13 anyway) are anything but engaging for adults... Minecraft bridges that gap nicely, and you may even find yourself in a world in which your kid's minecraft contraptions show yours up...

Facebook's privacy policies basically amount to "you only have as much privacy on our site as we feel like giving you". Anyone who still chooses to use the site after that and is surprised by a privacy breach clearly does need to go back and get educated on how privacy on Facebook works.

On the other hand, this is a matter of other people who know secrets essentially posting them online. This is nothing new.

You can search the web for a repo, and add it to your /etc/apt/sources.list file. http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Precise#IceWeasel should point you in the right direction.

"The Cloud".

What is perhaps worse than that is that some businesses still use OS/2. And some even still use punch card systems. Not every computer on the planet is connected to the Internet, and some exist behind firewalls, which, if breached, would be small potatoes compared to other systems on the same network, and thus are not a high priority to have upgraded. Up until the late 90s, even the White House still was using a good few Commodore 64 systems...

In elementary school, we had Apple II's on which we played a few games (Oregon Trail is the only one I recall...). ONCE they sat down and showed us roughly how using a modem works, and how email works, but it was more just watching the teacher than any hands on experience, as most kids didn't have regular access to a computer yet anyhow. There was a single computer in the library (not sure what OS...probably win95) which had Grolier's Encyclopedia on CD-ROM, which I recall checking out on a few occasions.

In middle school, we were using Windows 95, and 98 as that turnover happened. We got basic typing instruction, though that seemed to be fading as this was when use of AOL Instant Messenger was taking off, and kids were showing up for typing class with precious little need to have anyone drag them through the basics. Also around this time was basic use of search engines (yahoo, excite, lycos, dogpile, altavista, and this NEW one with the weird name of "Google" that one of the teachers had stumbled upon while surfing in their free time...). Throughout middle school, we also got periodic instruction in use of MS Word and Powerpoint, with perhaps a dusting of Excel once or twice (more for making graphs than anything else).

High school was where I got regular access to the Internet at home, and I was fairly late in my town to be getting it (we'd had computers all my life growing up, but they were all old by the time I even got to any playing with them (think Commodore 64 in 1993), other than the Pentium I box we got in 1996 with a modem that only worked a handful of times...I suspect it was just a matter of bum hardware). In any case, High school was where we got a bit more with web research skills, use of graphics editing programs, and an elective to learn basic C++ (the only programming class offered at all). Most of the learning I did in High school with computers involved either at home stuff on my own, or hanging out with the tech club during open periods, which was quite the helpful way to pass the time that I'd recommend to any teenager looking for both technical knowledge AND a social life in high school at the same time. You might even get some inside information on how the school firewall is set up, allowing you to find interesting and easy ways to bypass it, like I did! (The firewall was port blocking, but allowed port 25. .Exe files were disallowed, but often changing the name to something like "calc.exe" was all it'd take to run say, Telnet. Telnet server on port 25 on the box at home, and voila... Anyway, obviously I'm dating myself with this one, because any kid these days would undoubtedly be able to rig up at least an SSH tunnel for a bit less awkward method of connecting out...I'm just recalling getting SSH running on our systems being a bit more of a pain than simple Telnet was...).

Anyway, I'm 26, for a reference point, and I'd be pretty horrified to hear of any school systems doing things the way they did while I was in school, but at the same time, don't actually expect that it's THAT much better, all in all.

I smoke an e-cig most of the time these days, with the occasional real cigarettes from time to time, and this sounds pretty familiar. There is a good reason for this, which you may or may not be aware of, which is that tobacco smoke contains MAO inhibitors (commonly used as anti-depressants, and known for producing a calming effect)...e-cigs don't (at least, in all cases I've seen). I've not played around enough with some workarounds I have in mind, but it may be worth your while supplementing your e-cig use with a cup of Yerba Mate, which contains naturally occuring moderate amounts of Mateine, which is an MAOI, and comparing the satisfaction between e-cig sans mate, and e-cig with mate. I strongly suspect it'll provide a noticeable difference.

The interesting thing when the types of intoxication is brought up, is that nicotine has been shown to increase many brain functions ( http://www.whatarenootropics.com/does-nicotine-have-nootropic-properties/ , contains further citations). Coffee tends also to improve work functions (though, once you get past a few cups, particularly in someone sensitive to caffeine, that can reverse as manic behaviors can take over, such as excessive talking...).

So, while most people may be too hung up on all the baggage that goes with smoking, it is worth noting that using another method of nicotine administration (e-cig, gum, patch, lozenge, or hell, even nasal snuff if used discretely) may quite possibly be at least as helpful during the workday as coffee, with similarly low health risks, and lower health risks than say, drinking a few Pepsi's throughout the workday (nevermind the neuro-degenerative effects of high fructose corn syrup...).

In any case, that anyone would compare periodic breaks for nicotine to periodic breaks for alcohol consumption is nothing more than amusing (and perhaps indicative that the person doing the comparison may never have imbibed alcohol...).

No, it has been proven that smoking cigarettes deteriorates your physical health. It has not and can not be proven that "smoking is bad for you", for every instance of "you" possible, because of the indefinite configurations of mental health, wherein there are those who exist that will, for example, commit suicide, if not for the bit of calm and stress release they gain from smoking cigarettes (extreme example, chosen for clarity). That doesn't even take into account those who, upon meeting someone while "bumming a smoke", make a lifelong connection that changes their life drastically for the better. Kind of hard to say that for all instances of smokers, smoking is always an action with net negative effects.

This seems to be a problem with the way human psychology works (or perhaps it falls more into the field of sociology...they're not REAL sciences anyway...). I mean, nobody wants to watch boring news on tv, so they don't bother showing it. But as soon as you show exciting (read: scary) news on tv with any regularity, it's Chicken Little time. Perhaps it'd be best if people kept up with current events via a medium that wasn't geared to be a sense-maximized entertainment device, but we know that won't be happening as long as people insist on keeping their tv's around. And to boot, even print media is overly sensationalized as well (because again, people buy what looks exciting).

Yea. It's looking like as long as there's news, there's going to be an added message to it, which is the media through which it is conveyed, even if unintended. The solution to this problem remains elusive, but perhaps referring to McLuhan will help.

Err, it's SLACKware. The idea has ALWAYS been that it was to be user-friendly, and not involve unnecessary work. They just never joined the camp that decided to mangle a good vanilla Linux install with all sorts of upstream changes.

If you really want l33t points, for every package you want to install, write your own slackbuild script. For those more geared toward efficiency, however, there's checkinstall.

Oh, and of course, in the meantime, I wouldn't worry too much about not seeming l33t by using slackware. That it's an ncurses based installation process is l33t enough to frighten off most noobs these days, who've been spoiled by GUI livecd's with a single-click to "install". Arch seems to be the only other mainstream distro whose primary installation method is non-GUI...even Gentoo has a livecd these days.

The thing is, every WiFi access point I've come across ships with instructions, which have all (again, in my experience) advised enabling security on the router. That people may not read these instructions, or follow them, seems nothing worth basing a law on. And I'd certainly not advocate it being legal to crack WPA/WPA2/WEP (even it if may at times be trivial), based on the fact that by setting security settings on the router, the owner has indicated that access to it and the traffic that it handles is to be private. Irresponsible use of technology (which is exactly what failure to read the minimal documentation that comes in the manual routers ship with is) is nothing that government should have any business reinforcing.

Beyond this, it also boils down to a simple matter of legislation offering nothing but a false sense of security to begin with, as passive sniffers are just about impossible to detect in action. The only thing making use of them on unencrypted wifi illegal would change would be the subsequent steps taken once data has been gathered. So instead of sniffing the traffic, and then using what was captured directly as evidence (in the case of a law enforcement sniff), the police would instead sniff the traffic, and then proceed to using the data to direct further investigation to acquire admissible evidence. In the meantime, absolutely nothing would be done to change the fact that due to ignorance, people are still leaving their personal information wide out in the open for anyone with a wifi card and tcpdump (or any of the other tools that'll do the job) to grab. Personally, I'd much favor the relatively brief growing pains while people realize how their radio transceiver equipment works and subsequent GAINS in privacy than using simple legislation to provide a false sense of security.

And that is correct. I do admit there will be growing pains. I'm sure a few people will get pinched for illegal or unseemly activity while they (unreasonably) expected it to be a private matter. While this is regrettable, I fully expect the subsequent large-scale changes in behavior will prevent far more people from having their privacy breached, by criminals rather than law enforcement (if we insist on distinguishing between the two in the first place...). And I think that, given that reality, even your average still-as-yet ignorant American, would agree that in the long run, this court decision is the right one. I could be wrong (or simply putting too much faith in the rational capacities of the average American), but that's the way I see it.

https://xkcd.com/435/

And physics is to sex as math is to masturbation.