I know this isn't the primary point of the announcement, but does anyone know where the authors get 10 years from, as included in this statement: "Today, 10 years after of SHA-1 was first introduced..."? Best I can tell, SHA-1 was formally defined in 1995 (FIPS PUB 180-1), and I'm pretty certain it was in common widespread use long before 2007. Are they referring to the first time it was introduced into one of their own products or something? or I'm I missing something obvious?

Anyone have experience with this company? MaxKeyboard I've been looking for a new mechanical keyboard on-and-off for a while (so this post comes at a great time for me), and I think I've settled on the Cherry MX brown switch (which I was satisfied to see was so well reviewed in TFA). I'm looking for a bit more than just a plain keyboard, though, and I currently have my eyes on the Nighthawk X8. It's pricey and seems to be a bit difficult to find, though (out of stock most places I've looked), and I'm not familiar with the manufacturer, but it seems to be a pretty solid product. Anyone have personal experience with either this keyboard or the company itself?

I agree with this as well. Honestly this is my only real complaint; I think the rest of the site works fine, pending some time to adjust to the new look and feel. However, the floating header is worse than a toolbar, as it actively covers page content. This is, I think, one of the worst and most offensive trends I've seen on several website designs lately. Please reconsider this, or at the very least make it optional.

I used to use 98lite for this, which does still seem to be available. Worked very well back in the day.

openSUSE is generally regarded as the flagship KDE distro. I've heard good things about Mandriva as well. Either one should give you a decent KDE experience. Personally I run stock KDE (on Gentoo), as I think the default theme and configuration is quite slick on its own, but most distros tend to add certain themes and enhancements to make it more accessible for newer users.

Of course, package management, system administration utilities, etc. are all somewhat unique to each distro, and will probably be different from what you're used to with Ubuntu, so do keep that in mind when comparing KDE vs. Gnome. Eg., if you don't like using YaST to configure your network settings, that's a knock against openSUSE, not specifically KDE.

I've seen drivers mentioned a few times as an issue with USB serial adapters, but something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the fact that these drivers are usually (or always?) tied to the OS, which means the device can't be used until the OS is running and the driver is loaded.

From the client perspective this isn't a big deal. Eg., when using a USB serial adapter on a laptop to connect to a switch or modem, you're already going to have your OS up and running on the laptop. However, from the server perspective, this can be a major problem. If you use this on a server that, say, doesn't have a native serial port, nothing can be redirected until after the OS loads the appropriate USB driver. So, POST/BIOS messages, bootloader options, initial boot messages (eg., dmesg for Linux) are all unavailable. This severely limits the usefulness of USB serial adapters.

I think this problem needs to be resolved before USB can ever be considered a viable replacement, though personally I hope it does. It seems like it should certainly be possible; HID device (keyboard and mouse) support is offered by most BIOSes by enabling the "Legacy USB" support option, so obviously it's possible to talk to USB devices at this level. They just need to settle on a standard protocol for serial communication that can be implemented in a similar manner.

Any Firefox/Greasemonkey users out there that are interested in this may also want to check out the Dict script: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/1467

It adds a similar, but much less intrusive capability. Simply double-click on any word to highlight it, and the definition is shown in a small window. Once you're done, just click the X (or use my own slgihtly-modified version and click anywhere on the page) to close it.

Of course, this has both it's pros and cons as compared to the original idea discussed in the story. Since it's a client-side solution, this isn't something that will be available to your visitors. However, the good news is that it doesn't hijack your browser's context menu, which, as mnay other people have commented, is something I personally despise.

Dang, that is right on man. I've been an Oracle DBA and Basis Admin before... and there certainly is that issue. If you don't hire a competent person and are willing to pay that person for their skills, they will flounder and that part of your implementation will suffer (and if Basis suffers everyone does).