A more accurate headline might be Jesse Jackson: Please, Pay Attention to Me!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but PCI compliance doesn't necessarily require a firewall between each system that takes credit cards. It just requires a firewall to protect all the systems that take credit cards. If you have a few POS systems and a SQL server that access credit card info, you don't need a software firewall on each of those systems. You could set up one hardware firewall that protects all of those systems from Internet traffic (and other LAN traffic, if needed).

It depends on what you're talking about, and where. A firewall between the LAN and the Internet, yes. Generally speaking, put it up, and then figure out what needs to be opened.

Beyond that, it starts to get a bit more foggy. Security is often a trade-off between making access too easy for attackers vs. making access to hard for authorized personnel. It's not uncommon for security software to do more harm than good, blocking things that shouldn't be blocked, breaking the networking stack in weird ways. When it comes to software antivirus and firewalls, my view is that you should use the more lightweight, least intrusive solution that meets your needs.

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that the original poster is asking about the built-in Windows firewall. Should that be enabled on all machines?

Sure, sounds good. We used to have a 'snack tax' here in California, but retailers complained that it was complicated and it was eventually phased out.

It doesn't even take any depth. I've cited wikipedia on my website (the intent was to link to more information, not to utilize it as an exhaustive source) and later gone on to visit that link to make sure it still says what I want it to say only to find out that since I cited the article, the article cited the very page on which I had cited it. Whoever cited my page was either too lazy to check the bibliography, which was at the foot of the page as normal, or didn't care that they were potentially creating a circular reference one reference long.

Honestly, determining whether you need a firewall isn't as simple as "yes, always, all the time" or "no you don't need one." You have to know what the firewall is doing, and what security is required. You can set up a firewall, allow all ports to be forwarded through without inspection, and while you have a firewall, it's not helping you. Or you could have a server running a secure OS with only the vital ports opened, without access to anything other than the Internet, in which case a firewall probably isn't doing you a lot of good.

Also, it seems you're talking about a software firewall installed on the server? I wouldn't trust it. If I'm running Internet accessible servers, I generally want separate hardware firewall, and I want to put those servers into a separate DMZ if I can. I might leave the built-in Windows firewall turned on if it's not causing any problems, but if I have to disable it, I don't worry too much about it because I have the hardware firewall.

A properly secured Linux/Unix server should be able to sit directly on the Internet without issues, but you may as well put it behind the hardware firewall if you have the option.

But are we talking about disabling the built-in software firewall on a machine that's only accessible by other computers on the LAN? That's probably fine. You should have some security preventing unauthorized personnel from accessing the LAN, and I would assume the SQL databse it password protected, right?

I guess my bottom line here is this: Since you can't trust a the built-in Windows firewall to actually protect from very much, you shouldn't worry too much about disabling it. Make sure your network is secure without it.

Ok, I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but it seems your argument boils down to "It's useless because I say it's useless. Nevermind that you earlier pointed out that it could be useful, because I decided that it's useless."

Glad we got that sorted out.

If it's not safe in the event of a disaster, then it's not safe now. Therefore, we should be evacuating it now, at least down to a reasonable level of population. You know those maximum capacity numbers that get written inside of businesses? Florida should have one, too.

I don't have an organ donation sticker because there have been paramedics who have outright announced that they don't work as hard to save donors. I will continue to not donate until this is no longer true. If I were to join an organ donation scheme it would involve reciprocity. I might well, although I forget the name of the one I liked the look of, and of course the google results are all scientific papers. They must not have paid google for ad placement, so it's not coming up at all.

Across the country, attempts at eliminating gun rights are soundly trumping any attempt at sensible gun safety regulation.

All the target getting hacked proves is that someone thought the target was worth hacking. It doesn't mean that their [primary] goal was even to pilfer technological data, let alone useful technological data.

It seems now that it's not about the relation being linear, but about something else that you won't say. I'm afraid I'm not closer to understanding.

Decompression time is always real time? So it doesn't matter what computer, what processor, the size of the file, the complexity of the file, or even what kind of file it is? Or do you mean that it needs to be able to be done in real-time (or faster) for some particular use a a particular kind of file on a particular platform that you have in mind?

I buy spools of what we call tie wire from the hardware store, it appears to be steel wire P in O (pickled in oil) which is stored in oiled paper. A lot of people might call that baling wire, but I'm not baling anything.

Ok, so let's start from where you're wrong that "What's important is to save space when broadcasting the content." There are other important things.

Next, what would you like to do then? Change this benchmark to measure decompression speed rather than compression speed? Sure, fine. Let's do that.