...because google doesn't want to stress their experiment that hard. Imagine how many torrents those kiddies would have going with a 1gbps connection. At least fu@!book doesn't require a fast connection...yet.

SSNs are used as an example. The real problem, alluded to in the article, is that the government attempts to classify personally sensitive, business sensitive, and military critical information (to name a few) under the same system. Unfortunately there is plenty of overlap and specific cases within these categories, resulting in a ridiculous number of labels - thereby resulting in mass confusion. However, this situation is often the case when one attempts to take a single system and apply it to such a wide audience. The US fed is going through a similar situation in IT and HR Management; at some point the benefits of consolidation result in less efficiency...

Totally agree. As much as owning a oscilloscope might warm the cockles of your inner nerd, a $2000 scope will likely not meet all your needs (assuming that you expect to get some millage out of the instrument.) In that price range you can buy an old (used) high end analog scope (or an old sampling scope with a negligible waveform memory) or a newer low bw digital sampling one with more recording capability. The new high end Lecroy Waverunners and Agilent Infiniiums that I use at work, but cost more than my car, combine both of these capabilities and are a electronic hobbyists wet dream. (Side note: No self respecting CS/CENG should put down 2k for an NI/Labspew product for personal use).

US federal government agencies are inept when it comes to a lot of things. (No political bias intended). Take a look at recent defense acquisition programs, business and wall street regulation... The virtues of "strong leadership [and] careful planning" seem to be in short supply thoughout the system.

This is actually the driving application for hybrid Si-InP integration research. (http://engineering.ucsb.edu/bowers/). The biggest limitation of this technology is the inefficiency of the laser. It seems logical that Intel is going after an electronically simpler application like an integrated tranceiver, before attempting to integrate with an already hot running microprocessor.