You're saying it's possible to secure a known username. Who cares? Suppose 90% of attacks are on those known usernames (I don't have actual figures, but that seems plausible, based on my own experience with publicly accessible Linux machines). Just eliminate 90% of the attacks (and the chance of brute force breaking through) by eliminating those known accounts from remote login.

Why wouldn't you do this? You can still secure the rest of your accounts. Hackers, botnets and script kiddies go after the low-hanging fruit. Reduce your attack surface, and you are clearly better off. There's almost no hassle to having to su to root once you log in with a normal user account.

By the way--logging in to a console in public is completely different from remote root access. If someone can see over your shoulder--there are lots of other ways for them to engineer an attack. But we all have to be aware of the greater risk of unknown users on the Internet just scanning IP ranges and trying to login. If you've ever had a public web server, you will see that this happens to every machine. Much more common than someone we know trying to crack into our box.

Pretty real security risk--first thing any good sysadmin does is disable remote access to known account names like "root" and "administrator"--you greatly reduce your attack surface by doing so. Take a look at ssh access logs and see how many denied attempts there were for "root".

Currently the Democrats have 51 confirmed seats, which is expected to reach as high as 53. 51 seats means a two-seat majority, while 53 would mean a six-seat majority. Basic math time, folks.

I think I used JOSM as well--it was a while ago. But I don't think JOSM allowed any rendering, so once I got a map segment with JOSM I had to render it with Mapnik.

When I got married, I decided I wanted to make maps for my guests, none of whom lived in our small exurb. It turns out this is a pretty common task. I didn't want ugly, low resolution mapquest printout maps though. I wanted to be able to put in points of interest, I wanted a high level of street detail and I wanted some control over the rendering. I was excited to find out about OSM. It turns out, the Open Street Map website allows you to download a section of the map as SVG. Great! However, one problem: it has a pretty small limit on how big it can be, which limits either map size or level of detail. I ended up downloading the entire map, the rendering software and Mapnik style sheets, and having to compile the renderer myself. Then I edited the map in Inkscape, but there are some boundary issues when you just want a small segment of a big map. It was a pretty complicated project, but I think ultimately worth it.

If OSM offered a paid or advertising supported service to help make custom maps, I think it would be pretty popular. I've toyed around with the idea myself of offering this service, but I don't have the time.

I don't think that's real language--it's made up for the movie Airplane!

No. Almost nothing is a regulatory taking. There's a very narrow area that's protected, and this almost certainly does not fall in that area.

Sounds like a research project at CMU called Internet Suspend and Resume. http://isr.cmu.edu/

Congress passed a law, the Communications Decency Act, which protected "service providers" from liability for distribution of information published on their forums by others. This covers Youtube, but not someone like Apple who is essentially a software reseller.

Or...you can just accept the Scrabble rules, which rely on lexicographers to determine the acceptability of a word. I'm not sure why you think you're better at determining what a "word" is than the committees of lexicographers who edit dictionaries. The original Scrabble rules are simple and avoid arbitrary classifications. Should we also eliminate rarely used scientific or medical words? Notes on the musical scale, which have english names? (do, re, mi, etc.) Is laser acceptable (light amplification by stimulated emission of radar)? Usage is what determines acceptability of something as a "word" in the English language, and determines inclusion in a dictionary.

Basically what you are saying, is that it's hard for you to remember these words. Part of the fun of Scrabble is in expanding your vocabulary. Accept the challenge instead of limiting yourself. There's already a clear, concise Scrabble word list. Use it.

By the way, ETC* is not acceptable, because it's not a word--it's an abbreviation without its own pronunciation. Amp, ref, and ex are all commonly used English words, so I'm not sure why they offend you. How often do you really say "amperage" or "ampere" rather than amp?