Sitwon

Work hard, play hard. Bust your ass at work for 4 days, unplug and go backpacking with your friends for three days. Rinse. Repeat.

Your kit is going to depend heavily on what your environment is like and what types of disasters you are preparing for. Also keep in mind that you're not just preparing for yourself, you're preparing for everyone else around you as well (family, friends, neighbors). You should also try to make sure you actually have the skills to use the equipment and that the equipment actually works before you rely on it. Do a dry run. Go camping or backpacking and practice using survival gear. Try shutting off the main breaker and see how well you can get by for a few days without any power. If there is anything missing from your kit, it's better to figure that out in a dry-run than when the real thing happens.

I think you missed the joke. http://www.subzin.co...h. RISC is good This might help. http://www.subzin.co...h. RISC is good It's not about running Linux, it's about having ownership of the device. I paid for the device, I should be allowed to run ANY software I want on it. I should be allowed to reprogram it any way I want. Maybe I'll run Linux, maybe I'll run Haiku, maybe I'll run FreeDOS. But that's not the point. The manufacturer telling you, "it will only run software that has been signed with a private key... and I'm the only one with the key," is not acceptable.Furthermore, this concept you seem to have of "wasn't designed for Linux" is just strange. How can hardware really be designed for or against a particular OS. It's designed to be Turing-complete so it can run any software that can be loaded on it. The issue is over who has the right to load software on it. As the owner of the hardware, shouldn't I be allowed to load any software I choose on the hardware? I don't care about drivers. We can always get datasheets for the chipsets from the silicon manufacturers who sold them to Microsoft and write our own drivers. I'm talking specifically about the problem of loading and running arbitrary software onto the device.For the sake of argument, if I want to run an Arm build of ReactOS then in theory I would be able to use the same Windows drivers that Microsoft uses. Again, I'm not asking anyone to support Linux. I'm not asking anyone to support ANY operating system (other than the one they sell me). This isn't about whether or not it runs Linux or whether or not Linux is "supported". It's about having the right to install any software or content I want on a device that I have purchased and now own.Here's the analogy, imagine you go to an office supply store to buy some paper. When you get there you find they have a new type of paper from Microsoft, but this paper is a little different from normal paper. Microsoft promises that anything you print or write on the paper will be backed up to their online cloud automatically. However, the Microsoft paper can only be used with printers that have been certified by Microsoft. You can't even write on it with a pen or pencil unless the pen or pencil was certified by Microsoft. And if you happen to print or write something that Microsoft doesn't like, they can permanently erase it right off the page (and out of the backup) at any time for any reason. If you try to find a way to circumvent these restrictions so that you can write on the paper with a normal Bic pen, then you will get sued by Microsoft. Does that sound like a good deal to you? Does that sound fair? Do you want paper like that?

Based on my recent experience using Codeacademy to tutor someone over the Internet... their tests are often broken and can easily give false-positives. This is a problem because it can give the student the impression that they are succeeding when, in fact, they may have completely missed the point of the exercise. If you're going to use a resource like Codeacademy, make sure you find someone with real programming experience to double-check your solutions. To be clear, it's not a bad resource; it's just not sufficient on its own.

Originally there was no requirement to allow it to be turned off on x86 machines, they only caved after a lot of pressure from the FOSS community. Now they've loosened the noose on x86, but not Arm.Are there going to be fewer people who want to put an alternate OS on their tablets? Probably. However by locking down the platform like this they are stifling that potential for innovation and competition before it even be explored. More and more Microsoft and Apple are both moving toward a walled garden model where users are "protected" form any applications or content which is not explicitly approved by some unknown body according to vague and unevenly applies criteria. Believe it or not, this is a kind of censorship. Even Google and Amazon are playing along, too. We are handing over our personal freedom and control over what applications we run and what content we see to these profit-driven, publicly traded companies. They have biases and agendas. It's short-sighted to say, "it's fine if they take away a freedom that few of us will exercise". By that logic, they will chip away at our liberties one by one until we have none left. Do you really want a world that is curated and dictated for you by some corporation that only cares about their own bottom line?

It's interesting to me that your response to that is "no biggie". In any case, http://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/09/thank-you-apple.html

Think of coast guards signaling to small fishing boats in countries where fishermen don't earn enough to afford fancy electric radios. It might be a foreign idea to those of us in wealthy first world countries, but it's a fact of life for millions of people around the world.

Encryption is a good topic, if you can explain it without relying too much on mathematical proofs. For example: http://www.wimp.com/howencryption/ If you want people to care, make it about defense rather than offense. Teach them how to be safe on the Internet. Maybe teach them about plugins that improve their browser security or about how to surf securely at a hotspot, or how to surf anonymously and use OpenPGP to sign/encrypt their emails. Teaching people things that they can and will use is generally better than talking about tools and techniques that they will probably never touch.

The consensus is to learn python/perl/php/rub/etc. FIRST, but don't stop there. C++ happens to be a horrible language for teaching to first-time programmers, but it's also a powerful and expressive language for professionals in many different fields. It shouldn't be the first language you learn, but neither should it be the last language you learn. You can learn languages like Python or Ruby in a week or two. C++ will months to learn and years to master.

http://learnproglang.couch.it/

I believe it's still used in some Navies to signal ships that don't have radios.

Legally, you could sell exploits through bounty programs. Sometimes companies will offer monetary rewards to people who find vulnerabilities in their systems. Look up some bounty programs and give it a go. Semi legally you could sell exploits on the black market. You'd have to first develop some valuable exploits, and then build the right connections to someone who can market and sell your exploit (and they will take a cut). Generally speaking, it still pays better than selling to the company through a bounty program. Doing the independent pen-tester thing... I've never seen that actually work except for guys who have already made a name for themselves in the industry. Never go to any admin or company with a vulnerability you've discovered and ask them for money. It will look like extortion.

http://packetpushers.net/

Amazon EC2 and Rackspace Cloud Servers are pretty good. If you don't need your servers running 24/7 you can end up paying less than $5/mo. Amazon even has a free tier, which you could probably take advantage of.

here's a decent one: http://railsforzombies.org/

That's basically everyone's first Rails project. Go do a Ruby on Rails tutorial.

I'm pretty sure VNC is the accepted way of doing what you describe. That said, not many people bother to use it. It's uncommon to run an X session on a Linux server and want to remotely control graphical applications running on that local (to the server) X session. You'd probably have better luck asking on the Ubuntu forums or on LinuxQuestions.org.

If password login is disabled then it's perfectly fine to run SSH on port 22.

That's a tough question. As I'm sure you're aware, self-learning is one of the most powerful and effective types of learning. We want to students to figure things out on their own and build their critical thinking and problem solving skills, however we also have a desire to help students who appear to be struggling. Figuring out where to draw the line, when you're helping them and when you're just confusing them or spoon-feeding, is a difficult challenge that both parents and teachers face. We also have to be careful because sometimes the things we learned as kids aren't being taught for good reasons. For example, some of the stuff my Dad wanted to teach me, I later found out had been disproven as scientist gained a better understanding of physics and chemistry. So it made sense that it wasn't included in the curriculum.

Being a teacher, especially for middle school, is a really tough job. I would try not to be too judgmental of the guy, I'm sure he's trying to do his best. Taking notes and rewriting things in your own words can help you to remember better than simply reading or listening. My understanding is that the reasoning behind this is that in the process of re-composing you are forced to think about and analyze what you're reading/listening to and understanding it at least well enough to form coherent sentences about it. It's the act of listening and thinking about it, rather than just hearing it but not really paying attention to it, that is most important. Having students take notes or rewrite something in their own words is one way to force them to pay attention and think about the meaning and not just the words. However, in a middle school environment kids generally aren't that interested and if they're writing notes, those notes are usually not related to what the teacher is talking about. So for a teacher, it's though. If they appear to be writing there's a good chance that they're not actually paying attention and are actually writing about something else or doodling or something. So it's reasonable that teacher would ask students not to write and look directly at him, at least that way he can tell that they're not doing anything else and can see my looking at their face if they're listen to him or thinking about something else completely. One of my old math teachers shared with me these insights: 1. If seating is not assigned, where students choose to sit is a strong statistical indicator of how interested they are in the class. The closer they sit to the board, the more interested they are in the class. 2. Statistically, students who sit closer to the board will get better grades than students who sit toward the back. Apparently this is true regardless of whether students choose where they sit or have assigned seating. You might try recommending to your daughter that she sit in the first two rows in all her classes. It may improve her chances of getting better grades. Also, if she's sitting at the front then it's easier for the teacher to determine if she's paying attention or goofing off. If he can see that she's taking notes about the lesson then he may decide not to tell her to stop. As a last resort, you could talk to the school counselor and see if you can get your daughter identified as a special needs student and get her on an IEP. This can be a double-edged sword, because on the one hand she could get a special dispensation to take notes in class, on the other hand she would be classified as having a learning disability and that tends to carry a social stigma. When I was in middle school I was formally diagnosed with ADD and put on an IEP. I was given extra time to complete tests and allowed to a computer instead of hand-writing assignments. My parents also tried medication for a while, but my grades actually got worse when I was on Ritalin. In classes where was ahead of the rest of the class (English and math) my teachers often allowed me to work on my own and didn't harass me about paying attention (time I mostly spent reading up on computers and programming languages). By the time I got to high school I had managed to develop coping mechanisms and stopped taking advantage of services and dispensations I was entitled to. Most of my high school teachers didn't even know I had an IEP.

I wish. More and more I feel like he is becoming a liability rather than a leader. I kind of want him to quietly disappear, or to just shut up and put his code where his mouth is.

If we're just name dropping... Newton, Leibniz, Tesla, Church, Turing, Ritchie, Kernighan, Knuth, McCarthy, Pike, Thompson, Wozniak, Raymond, Torvalds, Volkerding, Rossum, Matz, Armstrong, Stroustrup... Is that enough? Is my e-peen big enough for you? Topics like this are kind of lame. If you want to discuss something just discuss it, don't try to test us or make assumptions about what we do or don't know. I found the tone of the original post to be condescending, especially coming from someone who's own authority on the subject matter has not clearly been established. The hacker community is actually rather remarkable in how familiar we are with our own history. It has been the subject of some research and thesis papers.

"Primitive"? I think that's a rather arrogant perspective. While it's true that certain phrases may require more sounds when translated literally into other languages, the reverse is also true. English is actually considered one of the most difficult languages to learn, in one study it actually tied with Chinese for second hardest. There are a lot of other interesting and unique languages out there, but I would be careful about making claims that one language is superior or more evolved than another. Some of those "primitive" languages have features that are more sophisticated than would be possible English. Part of why English is so complicated is that it's the bastard child of several thousand years of raping and pillaging (in both directions). Every time the English-speaking word conquers or is conquered by another culture our language morphs and changes. We adopt new vocabulary, new grammar, and new idioms. ln the process, we have lost any semblance of consistency our language may have ever possessed. We have almost not concept of "regular" verb conjugation. We also have no consistent morphology. How often have you heard people complain "that's not a word!" in reference to compound words like "unfriend"? In almost any other language this would not be a problem at all, but in English it is. In English compound words are hard because we don't have our own rules for morphology, we rely on the rules of other languages (languages which most English speakers are unfamiliar with). For example, if the root words are Latin then we try to use the Latin morphology, if they're Greek we want to use the Greek morphology, if they're Germanic we use the German morphology, etc. This means that not only do you need to memorize the arbitrary spellings of word and the arbitrary conjugations of words, you also have to memorize the origins of each word and learn the proper morphology of the parent language. (Think of the argument over the plural form of "octopus". Should it be "octopuses" "octopi" "octopodes"?) The bigger problem comes when you have two roots from completely different linguistic lineage. What do you do then? Which system do you follow?

Sorry, you're wrong. This is Haiku: http://www.haiku-os.org/

Wow, I think C++ is probably one of the worst languages you could teach to beginners. It's unnecessarily convoluted and takes a really, really long time to master. You don't need that much complexity to teach computer science, especially not in the intro levels. Start with something like C or Lisp which are equally powerful but much simpler to teach/learn.