...Freedom of Speech. I am appalled by the NZed politicians if this is the way they want to treat travelers

Mine is one family that will continue to travel to Australia, when I can, but I have now put NZed on my "Anti-democratic government" list, until wiser souls in the NZed government returns to its' senses and quashes this kind of nihilism. And, I had such great hopes with their new Prime Minister!

Your ignorance is showing.

There are dozens of other companies that "make and market this drug". Look it up before embartassing yourself again.

Your assessment of the reason for Patents is misguided and misinformed. Patents exist to reward inventors with a limited-time frame during which they can maximize their revenue from the product of their works, by providing an alternative stream of income from licensing of the patent to others. And, it still functions that way.

Only vain people seeking self-satisfaction apply for a patent they don't intend to turn into income.

And, that arcane language is a tool used by attorneys to make the application sufficiently unique that it doesn't tread on other patents that already exist, which leads to rejection of the application.

There are dozens of other manufacturers of this same medication (see https://www.pharmacompass.com/...), and four newer alternatives to this medication that are more widely prescribed (https://healthplans.providence.org/providers/news-and-events/provider-enews-archives/older-articles/uti-drug/).

Basically, this CEO wants to get out of this highly-competitive marketplace, but is too stupid to just shutdown it's manufacture and sell all remaining stock of the product.

I love it when incompetent people try to boost their personal wealth, but slit their own throats in the bargain.

...Reviews:

They have their own pathetic and stupid (even for "ostensible" AI) rating system. It goes like this:

"Oh, you LIKED this movie? Here are 254 other movies your SURE TO LIKE, too!!!"

But, of course, none of them are even vaguely interesting to that viewer, because each movie has probably 10 (or more) unique features that the viewer might chose to use to select similar movies: Actors, plot-lines, Director, subject matter, characterization, music, etc, and Netflix has NO IDEA what YOUR interests are (they could probably collect historical data and figure it out, but their interest it not in YOUR satisfaction...just that you pay them each month...so ANYTHING you pick next makes them happy).

Bogus recommendation in the extreme.

...I was engaged by three Fortune 500 CEO's at the same time. Made a pile of money, and retired.

Not bad for a high-school dropout, eh?

I understand your read at a 2nd Grade Level, That would explain your lame attempt to equate Republicans and Democrats. On the other hand, I agree that money drives politics and elections have become a farce. Let's get the money out of politics, so those who are only interested in themselves (self aggrandizement; f. ex. see White House) can lose to people who are interested particularly in how CITIZENS live and thrive with good government focus not on wealth, but on living conditions of the electorate.

You empty Dem-bashing is rooted in your political inclination to BELIEVE; the evidence is the utter absence of REASON. You wrote: "Democrats have never supported true net neutrality." Really, do tell! You seem to ignore the fact (in your effort to denigrate Commissioner Wheeler) that Net Neutrality was created during his tenure. On the other hand, Ajit Pai, the current FCC Commissioner is the person killing Wheeler's successful creation of the "neutrality" rule. Ajit Pai came from Verizon, is doing Verizon's bidding, and has a cushy job waiting for him when he leaves the FCC, created to reward him for his destruction of the "net neutrality" Verizon (et. al.) wants to gut, so they can make more money by charging customers more to get the content THEY want, not what vendors want of foist off on them.

Please go learn how to REASON. Your posts would be so much more relevant and factual.

I appreciate your claims...but I invite you to actually explain how--if they can get "inside" the first router, and suss out the address range for the second router, they can get into that second router. The routers are not platforms for programming; each has its' own proprietary-ness that must be coped with. Then, even if they gain first-level access, they've got to suss out how to program that second router, too, and develop code for that...which they have to somehow slide past the first router to get into an executable environment on the LAN side.

In general, most security methods are deterrents because they raise the price to the potential attacker to an unacceptable level, and that encourages them to quit and go find that laptop user in a coffee shop using the local (and free) Wi-FI connection. It's a lot of work, just to find out that you've just hacked "Grammy Rose's" Facebook access platform!

In conclusion: I published a common IP-address string. Are you so dense as to believe that I would publish my actual IP Address? And, yes, I've known it as "cascaded NAT," but you can call it "double NAT" if you wish. All I know is that it all works for me, and has for over 30 years. Someday, maybe, I'll have to toss it out and do something more elaborate...but, so far, I've been pleased with my local results.

Thanks for that feedback. I appreciate the validation. I've been using the "cascade" technique for 17 years, now. Some of my colleagues scoffed at the idea when I first proposed it...but, since then, they've all been hacked...and I'm still (I assume, since I've found no untoward behavior on our small network) invasion-free.

Everybody has a different set of principles by which they judge a gateway router...but here's an approach I recommend. Insofar as I know, it's damned hard to "beat" this solution, unless the invader is able to modify the routers' own firmware:

In a solution I call "Friday's Folly," I use TWO cascaded routers: The first is in my ISP's connection equipment, which has it's own configuration. I use that to assign a distinct and unique IP address range (don't use 192.168....; it's too often used for novices, so they don't have to think.). Pick a different range altogether...that's the first point of confusion for the erstwhile hacker. The time delay through both routers is virtually undetectable.

The SECOND cascaded router has, on its' input side, an incoming address (as odd-looking as possible within the first router's LAN range). On the other side (multiple outlets for the LAN), i use a completely different IP Address range, picked almost at random. It is that range (which is masked down to just a small range) to access the protected LAN resources.

Why would any hacker/cracker want to work so long to get inside the LAN; he(/she) would have to find a way to "probe" for the valid ranges inside the cascaded routers. At that point, I make the choice to install routers for which any signal on the WAN side can't be used to configure the router...therefore, its' configuration is withheld from all but qualified parties on the INSIDE of the network, on the LAN.

Anybody figured out how, with a $20 second router in place, that cascaded router scheme can be easily hacked? The goal was to make the solution so cumbersome (from the WAN side), that they'll go try to invade some other, simpler, less well protected target.

The opponent may be able to get past the first router by peeking inside the ISP vendors' equipment...but that's a chimera, reaching only the SECOND router...for which they have no resources inside the first router to leverage to open up the second router. So, now they're constrained to fashion some tool on the first router that will arbitrarily scan the second router, looking for a hit.

Nonsense! 100% daily backups of systems, using a suite of tools kept offline except during backups activity is ALWAYS a solution....simply because an attack starts at a particular time; anything you've kept offline prior to that time is a resource to be used to recover. Yes, there is the problem of recapturing the lost data in that time interval, but it's a LOT better than having to start redesigning software from scratch AFTER the attack has occurred!

100% daily backups, with recycling of media over a period of a few weeks is a MANDATORY requirement for every computer under my management. Since I started doing that in 2001, I have never had (nor has any client had) an unrecoverable loss of data.

The other trick is keeping data separated from executables. My mantra is "C: is for Code, D: is for Data". The idea that everything should be on the same logical drive is simply WRONG.

There are no perfectly secure systems, and perfection is a fools game. But, simple strategies, unerringly repeated over time, can make recovery from assaults (or hard-disk failure) a straight-forward solution.

I concur. And, if you add a tool named SimpleSYN, you can automatically share and manage a workgroup's combined, integrated Contacts, Calendar and Tasks/ToDos, so you can schedule meetings without waiting for everybody to tell you they're busy then. That sharing can be local, within a LAN to preserve the privacy of the data, or via the Internet, for people on the road, or other fixed locations (the usual caveats about security apply).

Of course, you have to deal with Microsoft's ideosyncratic approach to software design ("Not the best way, OUR way!"), and usual regular rash of bug fixes.

1. When companies make a good, useful product, customers will buy it.
2. When investors dictate that they must have a particular financial product, quality and features go to hell.
3. I weaned myself off Adobe several years ago, when it was clear they were MORE interested in income than in CUSTOMER satisfaction. When they stopped providing any meaningful "Customer Service."
4. I have, so far, been steadfast in my decision to only buy from companies who are focused on CUSTOMER satisfaction, rather than short-term greed.

Adobe is dead to me. Ghostscript has so many useful front-ends that make it viable in many environments (e.g., producing a PDF from a webpage, which most products do by making "snapshots" of the text). Tools like Bullzip (the browser add-in relying on Ghostscript) produces near-perfect PDF files that can be imported into good text editors for annotation, amendment and incremental improvement.

...are these vendors to stay attached to their "income is the most important thing in the world" mindset, or do they take the more mature view that "customer satisfactions is vital to survival?" Clearly, most of all major industry is focused on the first, at the expense of long-term survival.

There's a reason that some automobiles are preferred over others, but many customers will STILL buy the cheaper model...only to become disgusted with it's quality in due time. Same issue, same ultimate result: Mercedes outlives the likes of virtually all domestic automobile companies (aka "Detroit"). Business success is measured by the number of customer who COME BACK, rather than try to find another vendor (who, in this renewal of the "Gilded Age") who will dazzle them with trinkets to sell them junk that needs to be replaced every few years, and an ever-increasing price.

Who is the Mercedes of the Operating System market? (My assessment: Nobody trying to make a profit fulfills that role, as more customers take the attitude: "If it's going to be junk, why shouldn't I just rely on what's free? At least I'm paying a fair price for it!"

If customer satisfaction were the standard by which they judged their success, "free software" would just be a testing ground for new ideas to gain a foothold, not a significant fraction of the adopting population.