and all running on top of TCP

Not necessarily. OpenVPN is an SSL VPN which defaults to UDP/1194.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
- Upton Sinclair

Unfotunatetly, we see the same kind of wilful blindness is other fields too.

Actually, there's no measurable effect from "the brain believing". Placebos have no effect on any actual measurable health outcomes, they only have an effect on self-reported health outcomes. People say they feel better. People say their hangnail is cured. People say that they can feel that their cancer is in remission. However, when the doctors take the actual measurements, there is no measurable difference between the control group (who got nothing) and the placebo group, no matter how much the placebo group claims they are feeling better and no matter how much the control groups claims they are feeling worse.

The governor who did that likely wouldn't get re-elected if the law was important and popular. Would you care to provide a reason why free and fair elections are not a sufficent check against that behaviour?

The real irony is that you've confused Iran and Israel.

Then why aren't you buying your own modem for less than $50 and saving yourself the money every month? I mean, I get it, I think Comcast is for the birds too but honestly bitching about something you can buy yourself and they'll absolutely allow you to take on all the risk for is not something to choose to complain about.

I don't buy the "good today, crap tomorrow" mentality. XP still has a massive installed base. This will open the door for entrepreneurial geeks to create their own security and stability patches.

Diid Symantec or Macafee say they were dropping XP support? Nope, it's a huge cash cow for them.

... I shouldn't sell our two AppleTVs?

In most cases it would dependent on the circumstances and whether the donation could be seen as compromising the figurehead's ability to lead. For example, the CEO of Chik-Fil-A will, most likely, be perfectly able to contribute to campaign against pornography, against religious freedom for non-Christians and against abortion without compromising his ability to lead, however, social conservatives would likely force him out for taking a stand on the opposite side of those issues (if they could, of course, I'm not sure how much ownership the CEO has). In this case, Eich donated money to a campaign whose sole purpose was to strip some people (including a number of the people working for him) of their rights, and it temporarily succeeded. That has to create some bad blood between him and the affected employees and that type of antagonism is not something to be taken lightly. Having done so and then having refused to recant his position, Eich had compromised his ability to lead and either they were going to go or he was going to go.

As I said, if he had been able to apologise and admit he had done something wrong, he likely would have been able to maintain the position, but if you can't publicly acknowledge that treating some of your co-workers as people deserving of fewer rights than yourself was a mistake, you aren't going to be able to lead them.

It wasn't just his political activism from 5 years ago that was the problem. If he had disavowed that behaviour, apologized to his employees and make an act on contrition (such as donating a significant amount of money to a pro-gay marriage organization or campaign) they could have buried the hatchet. However, apparently he still does not believe that his gay employees should be fully equal to the heterosexual ones. Effectively, he chose to step down rather than admit he was wrong.

You have it backwards, it's a religious ceremony around the secular activity of signing your marriage certificate. The religious ceremony has no legal standing if you don't sign the government's paper. Next you'll be telling us that only proper Christians should be allowed be married and that athiests, agnostics and those who worship the wrong god should also be excluded from marraige.

This is very simple, the amendment conflicted with a part of the constitution that wasn't amended, thus the amendment was determined to be improper and tossed out. It's actually the job of the courts to do that type of thing, though it would happen less often if politicans wrote fewer stupid laws.

Actually, I thought he was referring to the right-wingers who use the threat of a liberal bogeymen bringing back the "fairness doctrine" to cudgel you into voting for them.

As CTO he was in charge of making technology decisions, as CEO he's in charge of making decisions that affect the gay employees he considers to be less worthy than himself.

See the difference?

I thought that was why we allowed them to wear the shirts in the first place without kicking up a huge fuss... It's a convenient self-applied warning label.