I think you misunderstood what I said.

The OS (at least, Linux and FreeBSD) enumerate the motherboard ports in order. So if your motherboard has 8 ports you can discover the order and number them 1-8.

If you plug in a device to port 1, and then later plug the next device into port 2, there is no chance the first device will be renumbered.

However, if you plug into port 2, and later add a device on port 1, it will get renumbered.

So when I get a new motherboard, I take a pile of old 16M (yes, Meg) flash drives I have, and name them A-G or whatever, then plug them into every port and reboot the box. By checking which one is on which device, I can label the USB ports 1-N. All that has to be done then is always plug the new device into the next lowest port and there is no renumbering ever.

Yes, if one comes unplugged AND you reboot, the ones past it will renumber. However, plug it back in and reboot and it all numbers back just fine, no config work necessary.

I've deployed a few hundred of these, and maybe once every 2 years or so have a minor issue where a colo tech moves cables wrong. It's never taken more than 5 minutes and a reboot to fix though. I can also deploy 96 ports of serial for less than $2k, I don't know any other commercial solution that can come close to that price point.

I've not seen a hardware/software combination in the past ~5 years that varied the initialization order. Now, the order in which the USB ports are initialized is often non-intuitive and non-documented, but just plug a flash drive into each available port and reboot the server to find the order they are initialized in.

Where I see most people go wrong is they don't figure out the order the ports are initialized, and thus don't plug the serial device into the first to be initialized. By plugging into some other port, then adding a device and rebooting they get reordered.

Does it take some care? Yes. However it's also an order of magnitude cheaper than most of the packaged solutions, and leaves you with standard unix TTY's which open up a world of scripting opportunities.

There's a little known, but very useful program called rtty. You can find it at ftp://ftp.isc.org/isc/rtty/rtty-4.0.shar.gz. Yes, it was last updated in 2003. Yes, there are package for major open source distributions.

Here's serial consoles on the cheap:

Buy multiport USB to Serial devices. They are a USB hub with a bunch of USB to Serial adapters hung off of them. Here's a 16-porter for an example: http://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/Serial-Cards-Adapters/~ICUSB23216F

Hang them off a low end box, I like half-depth Intel Atom servers with lots of USB ports.

Run rtty. It records each console to a log file 24x7, and allows multiple people to connect at the same time (including typing).

Tire Rack to the Rescue: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=35

"V" speed rated tires, rated to 149 MPH, are common on just about any "performance" car, like say a Mustang.

"W" (168 MPH) and "Y" (186 MPH) are in fact relatively common, and stocked in most performance sizes at your local warehouse.

The "Z" rating simply means "somewhere above that", and "go read the manual".

For instance the stock tires on a Z06 Corvette are: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Eagle+F1+Supercar+G%3A+2+RunOnFlat&leftTire=735YR8F1G2LROF&rightTire=735YR8F1G2RROF&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

$385 each, rated to 186+.

Now, if you want to push the boundaries of DOT legal, here are some auto-cross tires. They are in fact DOT legal, but not recommended for use on the street: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Toyo&tireModel=Proxes+RA1&partnum=735ZR8RA1HC4/32&vehicleSearch=false&fromCompare1=yes

$265 each, Z rated. Once heat cycled they should easily be good into the low 200MPH range.

The insane Veyron tires become necessary somewhere north of 225MPH or so. Like with many things the forces get exponentially stronger with speed, and thus the cost gets exponentially higher.

This is someone who was ok with ASN.1, OID's, and "walking" tables that had no business in being walked, over an unreliable UDP protocol that initially had effectively zero security.

Someone stop him from developing a home automation protocol before his being "first" relegates that industry to 30 years of pain and suffering.

Absolutely. Here's another way to look at it. At $200/mil a year in spend, an (to make numbers easy) an average spend of $100k per employee (which for a salary+benefits+sg&a number is probably low), that's 2,000 people working on the web site. Facebook has 3,000 employees. And thats if it was all employee costs, no equipment.

Remember they have to interface with 50 different state systems, plus other government agencies. It adds up quick, 5 people per state to figure out the state requirements and interfaces is 250 people right off the top, for instance.

I'm afraid there are a lot of ./ users who have build a web site that sees 10k users a day, which is not that hard on commodity hardware, but have no clue what it takes to handle 10 million while staying inside the lines of a bevy of government requirements.

I see this comparison a lot, so let's dive into it.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/fb/financials

Facebook had a COGS cost of 1.36 billion, and a R&D cost of 1.4 billion. Since they basically only operate a web site, that's all the cost of operating a web site. So to 2.76 billion dollars in a single year spent on Facebook.com.

Healthcare.gov spent 614 million over three years. At $200 million a year, that's roughly in line with Facebook's spending level back in 2009.

And Facebook has never gone down, right? It's never had a load issue, right? Yeah, didn't think so.

I was under the impression that people who signed up before March 31, a one time delayed deadline, did not have to pay the 2014 fine. The deadline for subsequent years would be December 15th.

And the first year fine, $95 or 1% of income, whichever is larger.

I've seen several people say "the cloud is the answer". I have one simple counter example:

Reddit. Any time they have a flash mob, and seemingly randomly almost every day they fail.

The clould does some things better and some things worse, and scales in different ways than a more traditional layout. Both can work if properly implemented, and one or the other may be faster/cheaper/better depending on specific site requirements.

GTA V? Sim City? Final Fantasy? Battlefield?

Turns out millions of users who start using something on the same day often don't follow the expected and tested for behavior.

Anyone who launches a service like this should expect to spend the first week in triage mode, and the first month making adjustments. I'd like to say proper planning would mean that never occurs, but the only way to insure that would be to spend 10x what is really needed. People would hate the government even worse if they did that.

This is not news, yet. It will be news in a month if it is still fubared.

You do realize apple controls how many are made, where they are released, and knows how many are sold the first month for each release?

No doubt there is a bean counter who figures out that they will do 20M 5s/5c the first month, so next year if they add 2 more countries they can do 11M day one, "breaking the record" on what will be 22M sales with growth.

These things aren't left up to chance. You'll know something is wrong when iPhone next is not 120% of iPhone previous.

Note that even if the consumer buys at the subsidized price Apple still receives revenue closer to the unlocked price, as the carriers pay the difference to attract the customer.

iPhone 5s "T-Moble Contract Free" prices, are $649, $749, and $849, depending on the amount of storage. See iPhone 5s. The iPhone 5C prices are $549, $649. See iPhone 5c.

Using an average price of $649, and 9 million units sold, that's $5.84 billion in revenue. That doesn't could any accessories (cases, car chargers, etc) or Apple Care sales.

GTA V made a relatively puny $1 billion. You know, chump change.

Correct. This is sort of like doing a review of an ordinary home door lock, smashing it with a police battering ram, and then declaring it useless.

The TouchID sensor is there to make things convenient enough that those who do not use a pass code now will use one. That's actually a huge leap forward, since it means a casual thief can't quickly get into your e-mail or contacts before ditching the phone. All it really has to do is slow someone down enough that you have time to get to a computer, invoke find my iphone, and remote lock it or even remote wipe it so people don't get your data.

I bet most people unlock with a thumb, but use an index finger on the screen.