I haven't ever experienced problems with data not being available on MySQL either. Running several Drupal 6 & 7 sites on MySQL. Also, the company I work for hosts their main customer interface against on MySQL and they haven't had any problems in the several years it has been running either.

Is that an issue from 'ye olde' days? I love your posts, but from what I am reading here, it seems like some have problems with bugs in MySQL that aren't actually there anymore. Either that, or I have just been insanely lucky to not have experienced any of them? I'm running Debian stable with apt sources from (http://packages.dotdeb.org stable). So my MySQL version is 5.5.30-1~dotdeb.0.

I couldn't blame you in that regard though, once something leaves a sour taste in your mouth, it's hard to find reason to go back and try it again, I've done the same thing. Though this article is definitely inspiring me to have a look at both PostgreSQL and MariaDB. One gripe I had before (in drupal v6 about 2 years ago) was that PostgreSQL was purported to not support a 'distinct' select by the maintainer of the 'views' module (or possibly a random committer?). It made some of the configuration that I tried to do with views not work out correctly, so I ended up hacking the module code to add distinct support.

Drupal v7 now has a database abstraction layer though, so it now supports specialized queries based on whatever DB you choose to run it on. Drupal 8.. haven't tried it yet, but I looked at some of their DB code using PHP 5.4 traits, and it looks pretty slick. I'm was planning on putting together a new VM soon for testing out Drupal v8 on PHP 5.4, I'll definitely give PostgreSQL and MariaDB a shot.. though http://packages.debian.org/testing/database/ doesn't seem to have a package for MariaDB, looks like mariadb.org has its own repos: https://downloads.mariadb.org/mariadb/repositories/.

Should be fun!

First three pages of Googling my name shows nothing about me; though it does show something about "write a prisoner" who has the same name as me. Hmmmm, maybe I should make myself more visible on Google actually.

Personally, I agree with some of what you said about the Anti-MS posts. Though, I've come to pay little attention to them other than the obligatory glance at the train wreck as I am passing by. I'm definitely no fan of MS, to be certain, but I honestly believe that most of the time the posters who post these things actually believe what they write. It's deluded, to be certain, and you keenly observe such, however, your mistake is that you seem to believe that the general readers of Slashdot cannot also observe this. Most people just blow it off and keep trucking though, and there is a good reason most people do that. Namely because arguing with or against someone so obviously deluded by their own perceptions is largely pointless, and the old saying, "Wise men never argue with fools, because people from a distance can't tell who is who" comes to mind as well.

The truth is, there will always be fan-boy's (of anything and everything you can possibly imagine) and I'm sure you know this, but you should try not to let that get to you. They're as much a part of the ecosystem here as at any other aspect of life and I think actually that they probably serve some healthy function in communities, (such as ants and bees and other insects serve a larger more obscure purpose in the world) though what that *may* be is beyond me.

Honestly, I think the bigger problem at Slashdot are derailed/off-topic comments that end up getting bloated with so many other comments which may or may not also be off-topic that they completely drown comments beneath them. It would be nice if they would implement a feature similar to stackoverflow to cause entire threads to sink down when the parent is modded down. Then maybe people wouldn't piggy back on the first post so often.

You presented a lot of good information though, and I am thankful for that. You could be a voice of reason on the site if you stick to the objective side of things and just let your facts stand on their own when they can. There isn't a need to defend them against foolish people who don't bother to read.

Thanks for the info. Google Play just lost another customer in me. I'm using f-droid now as well. Also just purged my phone of any other extra Google anything services. I used PDroid to lock down all the rest which I couldn't outright remove.

I have purchased a few apps from google play store, but they still seem to work with it gone. However, having AdAway removed is just so.. sneaky and underhanded. I don't trust app developers implicitly, AdAway was a basic protection against rogue apps using my power and bandwidth without permission, now Google is going behind my back and attacking the developers of these protective apps so they don't have to deal with me directly?

Lately Google has been upsetting me more and more with their direction. Over the past year I have been slowly trying to phase out anything Google from my life. I just don't trust them anymore.

I can't wait for Firefox OS.

That reminds me of a scene from "Wall-E" where the fat people on the hover chairs only talked to each other via their HUD.

Calling a smartphone emasculating though, that's really far fetched and leads me to believe he has some strange ideas about what masculinity actually is. Either that or he is just really grasping at straws trying to push the glasses. Either way, he definitely doesn't think very highly of the people he is speaking to if he believes rubbish like that will actually persuade them.

You're awesome. You're a strong 3rd on my "Cool Guys" list.

I see a note on the punkspider site to opt out of having your site scanned. Is there a specific way to opt in as well? I would be interested in seeing what results could come out of scanning a few of my sites. I've tried using Skipfish in the past, and a few other scanning utilities, and got a lot of false positives, and also a lot of missed positives. Things I knew were vulnerable and just wanted to see if the scanner would pick up on it.

Thanks for the great work! I look forward to seeing the results, even if some people don't like it. Perhaps sending a notice to "webmaster@domain.tld" would suffice? Possibly even a month or so. Just something along the lines of:

I know I would personally appreciate such an automated approach.

Personally, I don't think there should be a removal from the list option if adequate time is given. That's just my opinion though. I feel like if you've done your due diligence to notify the maintainers, after a month or two of time, the public should have a right to know so that they can be avoided.

Absolutely. If there is any activity on the network at all https://www.wireshark.org/download.html would pick it up in a split second.

Are you thinking of WEP encryption? If you are using WPA2 encryption, asking someone to change their password once a day is completely unreasonable.

If you are using WPA2 and a semi-long password there is absolutely no need to change the password daily. The way that cracking WPA2 works is by capturing an authentication handshake of a user who knows the password, storing that locally and then cracking it on the local machine. Now you are playing the waiting game, even if the attacker was using (http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/12/25-gpu-cluster-cracks-every-standard-windows-password-in-6-hours/) cracking at 350 billion passwords attempts a second, a password with 20 characters (upper, lower, digits, and punctuation) would take
(32 lower + 32 upper + 32 punctuation + 10 digits) 104 ^ 20 = 2.1911231430334195e+40 possible combinations.
2.1911231430334195e+40 / 350,000,000,000 attempts per second would require 62,603,518,372,383,410,015,659,322,218.865 seconds to try each combination. Which comes out to a potential 2,905,645,676,789,197,589,949.8015733293 years to crack. Change your password once a year and call it good.

Wireless networks are not open by nature, they are broadcast by nature. There is a very big difference.

I pretty much do the same as you. Some people are still amazed at how fast you can be when you stop using a mouse and only use the keyboard. This is however, completely compromised when you run across applications that have poor keyboard support. Most browsers tend to have excellent keyboard support though.

I am used to using a screen session over and SSH terminal most of the day though, so the keyboard is the king of the kernel there.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/keyboard-shortcuts-perform-firefox-tasks-quickly

Good resource for keyboard computing. Not sure if Firefox is your weapon of choice, but a good deal of the key combinations work across most browsers.

The solution is on the way then: http://www.ouya.tv/

That will solve both steps 1 and step 2 for you. As well as being a slight bit cheaper than buying your own mini-pc, and at the same time have a more limited application purpose. However, it sounds to me like that isn't something you would consider a problem?

I should clarify also -- the mentality I am approaching this with is:
If I have a solution that works for me, I'll share it with others. If that solutions helps others, cool. If not, I shrug and move on.

Yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying, and tradition can certainly be a reason. It's not one that I personally follow, but I accept that it is valid. I always thought the point of playing games like that with others was the bonding experience and which game you play, and on what system you play it, was kind of a secondary factor. I know I played a ton of ridiculous games with my friends.

Also, I really don't understand the "I don't want to hook a computer up to my TV" mentality though. Consoles are just niche PCs after all -- to each their own though. It's really none of my business, but the options are out there, even if they aren't ideal. It's not like I'm planning to lead a revolution in the gaming market, so I really only tend to focus on personal solutions.

There's no reason that it can't though. I'm sure there are some indie games out there that cater to a crowd like that. USB controllers aren't expensive, and a laptop or mini computer (typically costing less than a gaming console, I see one right now for $250 with better specs than the current gen of consoles). You could tote that around to a friends house with remotes, load up some emulation software for old games or load in your shiny new game with multiplayer support through the HDMI out.

Not saying that it is the same, but I have been doing this with a laptop since near 2004. Having a wide selection of roms to choose from is nice too. As a bonus, you can upgrade or repair the mini PC as needed, to an extent of course. You're still limited by what's available in that form factor.

The option is there though, costs roughly the same as a console, with the addition that it is slightly more complex (and rewarding) when pulled off correctly.