Accepting applications has long ceased to be a first come, first served business for landlords in markets like San Francisco, or Sydney, Australia. They accept all of the offers and then wait to see who will offer the highest rent. It's basically an auction, except you don't get to see what other people bid, so you have no idea if you're competitive of not. I don't have a problem with this. It's awful, yes, but it's a symptom of skyrocketing rental prices, and actually at least you get to see what the current highest bid is.

but, but, but the web is the future for all applications! We'll all be running apps on the cloud from our thin clients! The network is the computer! etc etc! Don't tell me they sold me a lie.

it looks an awful lot like applescript to me;

   repeat with x = 1 to the number of words of tAnswer
      add the number of chars of word x of tAnswer to \
      sAnswerCharacters
      repeat with y = 1 to the number of characters of word x \
         of tAnswer
         put "letter" & x & y into tButtonName
         put "underline" & x & y into tUnderlineName
         put character y of word x of tAnswer into tCharacter
         put tCharacter & "Icon" into tImageName

         set the cLetter of button tButtonName of group \
         "Answer" to tCharacter
         set the icon of button tButtonName to the id
         of image tImageName of card "Image Store"
         set the visible of graphic tUnderlineName of group \
         "Answer" to true
      end repeat
   end repeat

Actually it has some decent libraries already, at launch. See http://golang.org/pkg/

I wrote a multithreaded telnet talker without having to care about threads or mutexes or shared memory access or select() or poll() or whatnot. Some channels and a few goroutines, and it all works really, really nicely.

THe syntax is a little weird, sure, but after a day of coding in it, its fine. You get used to it, and I find it easier to pick up than say, haskell.

I think their point is that, on their hardware, it's licensed. On other hardware, it is not, therefore it is an unlawful copy. But, it's hardly a complete copy, is it?

The biggest obstacle is learning it the first time. If you're smart, you then write a Makefile or shell script or whatever to the automate it for the next package. Its Not That Hard (tm) Really, I'm a lazy sysadmin, so I prefer the software does all the hard work, not me. :)

+1 also, use the package signing system to verify that the packages distributed to machines are really released. use the package dependencies to pull in all the required packages for a given system. If you do it right, all you need is an apt repository, and you type "apt-get install prod-foobar-system" and everything will be pulled in and installed. In the correct order. I converted a site to this method (on Fedora Core many years ago) and we went from taking a day to build machines to 30 minutes. 1) Put the mac address in the kickstart server and assign the appropriate profile. 2) Boo the machine from the network 3) Watch it build. The profile for that machine would have the packages for the environment we were building listed. 4) Reboot. Machine would have the right IP and be completely configured and running. It just works.

I think that got thrown out of court; rail and bus information is public domain. They're not obligated to provide it in an easily fetchable format, but it's perfectly ok to republish it as long as you make it clear that you're not the original source.

This struck me as incredibly funny.

as far as the nics are concerned, its all just ethernet packets. There is no state to handle. The state is maintained by the guest OS, and is transferred when the OS memory is transferred.

Starships on Trek have been done. You can't do yet another one, without falling back onto the old formula. DS9 was good because it was a different formula, but even it got stale after a while. Star Trek Academy would suck, please don't do that. If Trek does come back, I'd like to see a show based on the idea of a (Culture reference here) "Special Circumstances" team, a group of top Starfleet specialists who are basically a special operations team that are show into dangerous situations, and with limited equipment and resources they need to resolve a serious problem that concerns the Federation. Or something else. Just not yet another Enterprise.

Cochran : Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe that his client wrote "Stinky Britches" ten years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Gerald Broflovski : Damn it!

Chef : What?

Gerald : He's using the Chewbacca defense!

Cochran : Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Where did I say we pay next to nothing?

There's a reason vendors dance to our tune. We pay well. They don't want to lose us under any circumstances.

Damn ACs. Posting behind anonimity, my reply will most likely be lost on him.

Where I am, vendors dance to our tune. Maybe it's because we're huge, but compared to the US we're tiny, but none of our vendors try that crap on us.

Jut the mere hint that we might think about going to a competitor, and they're scrabbling around on all fours, asking for forgiveness.

Don't agree to it in your contract and they have nothing on you? *shrug*

The worst thing about this? 5,000,000 people who think they know what happened, posting "helpful" suggestions or analysis

"The problem is definitely spanning tree!"

or

"Back in 1998, we were running these HP switches right, and ..."

or

"Did you try resetting the flanglewidget interface?!"

or

"I've seen this exact problem! You need to upgrade to v5.1!"

etc

Its not your network. It doesn't matter how much you think you know, you don't know the topology, or the systems involved. It'll be interesting to know what the ACTUAL reason was, when they figure it out. Assuming it isn't aliens.