I really liked Cryptonomicon, but like others here, I bought Anathem, and just couldn't get into it. I hope they make a movie based on it, but it would be brutal. I think even Peter Jackson said it would be too long. Seveneves looks like it might be a fun read.

Just saying. If the source article gets that fundamental fact wrong, what can we take away from the rest of it. Were they really monkeys?

I'm sorry, I overstated the issue. The command I typed still only exposes the issue in the bash program, not the ksh program. Setting the x=.... function and then invoking bash is an issue, but if you run: env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' ksh -c "echo this is a test" you don't see vulnerable, I'm sorry for the confusion.

When I execute: env x='() { :;}; echo vulnerable' bash -c "echo this is a test" on ksh under Sco unix 5.0.7 - it outputs vulnerable I'm not sure if ksh on other platforms would also be vulnerable (probably)

The original poster was asking for advice concerning media servers, yet most of the comments here have been about players. Personally, I think the need for a media server has largely gone away. Most NAS devices support either DLNA, NFS, SMB, etc., and any media player worth its salt can find sources on the local network and play them. Yes, if you want to be able to transcode on the fly, then Plex makes sense, but how much transcoding is really required these days. My current set up includes: Dlink DNS-325 running firefly that my Roku soundbridges / iTunes clients use for music. Yes, it's old school, but I love the soundbridges. In terms of media players, I use the D-Link boxee box. It's not super fast, but it can use nfs to stream movies from the DNS-325. I would like to run XBMC on it instead, but I'd lose Netflix if I did that.

I think the fatal flaw in the dogma of MAD is that it is predicated on the notion that the actors act rationally and share the same root common values. I don't think that's the case with Iran or other countries with unstable, immature, leaders.

Has anyone managed to send data using this technique? I realize that the data payload would be very small, but considering how fast you can switch SSIDs I imagine this should be possible. The main advantage is that you wouldn't need to actually assign an IP address to your computer in order to receive data - which should reduce the potential for malicious access. I did a quick google search and didn't find anything under "send data using ssid". Anyone seen something like this? What is the theoretical / practical data throughput? Could multiple routers be used in parallel to increase throughput? (like in the old days of bonding ISDN channels together)

I bet the people at monster are working up a slew of new ads...

could we ever have really conceived that this would have been one of the unintended consequences of an implementation of computer science? I know it's somewhat facile, but really, expressing oneself in a virtual digital media would result in persecution and possible incarceration? Is there a way to to fix this? Or is this kind of thing just an inevitable consequence of technology allowing us to express ourselves such that a state can exploit and use that freedom of expression against us? How many degrees of separation is it, I wonder, from Kevin Bacon, to an extended jail term in Thailand?

Who needs another operating system? RIM had a great run. Even if QNX is the best OS ever (until the next best OS ever), it doesn't change the fact that RIM's infrastructure is proven-ably unscalable and has not evolved. It's too bad, but that's the reality. Who knows what the the next quarter will bring, but I bet that the playbook will be resigned to the dust bin of technology. There is no way, no way, that RIM can supplant the iPad or the Android tablets.

You will be missed amongst the technocrati. You leave an indelible mark upon the technical and cultural landscape, one that the rest of us no doubt will take for granted.

There are serious licensing issues involved with using cygwin - anything that links to the cygwin1.dll is tainted by the GPL and it's source must be released. You can by a license from RedHat, but it is very expensive. MKS had a competitive product that didn't have the licensing issue (although you had to buy runtimes for each machine or machine instance you wanted to run you app on. Will cygwin even work under Windows 8?

You saw every keystroke that other people were typing in real time. I think there are real advantages, because you anticipate what someone is abou to type and interrupt them in realtime. I think that can save time in some conversations. However, the typos, and the backspaces did become tedious.

It seems obvious to me, that after many comments, that there is no consensus to this question. The art in deciding what is the best technological solution in terms of streaming video to the living room remains unevolved. Everyone has their opinion. I use a dlink 323 that talks to my xbox 360, but it sucks - requiring time consuming transcoding and the all too familiar experience of a data file that for all intents and purposes should play, simply doesn't. I know in my heart of hearts that there ought to be an inexpensive open hardware solution that can stream content from either an internal or network based source video and dts audio to my TV but it simply doesn't today. At least there doesn't seem be to a definitive, universally accepted as the best way to do this, at least at cost of less than $400. I think this community can do better. We should be able to define a hareware platform / software configuration that is both open and reliable to do this simple task.