I think you are overreacting a little bit. The expectation always was that one or more root servers would be unavailable at any one time - hence why there are 13 different root server systems available. More than one can be unavailable for days, and due to redundancy and caching it won't affect anything - as expected, nobody has really noticed this blip.

There should be a good mix of technologies used in the different root server systems - different architectures, OS, etc. Some sites use anycast which gives massive redundancy within that system as well as providing good performance. However other architectures have their place and may be more robust to attack or certain failures. We need the variety.

So technically it's a shame that H has gone down - they don't seem to have a good track record. Fortunately this time it isn't an issue.

I'm on the other side - an employer looking for good graduates at the moment. We're not expecting graduates to walk out of university and just fall into being a constructive member of a development team. We expect to give training to fill in a few of the gaps and cover some of the specifics on how our specific industry works. However, so far most of the people we've interviewed have very little knowledge of the basics... data structures, algorithms and so on. Quite often they hardly understand the project work they did at university - either as a group or individually. I believe that the jobs are out there, it's just that the quality of a lot of graduates is quite low.

It isn't. S/he might mean 1$/MB. Even then, most iPhones are on large data plans that include hundreds of MB per month. I know people here that use 3G for their home internet connection - and you wouldn't do that if it cost $1/second!

Once the core network is updated, fibre and xDSL technologies can be used to deliver IP to certain end users - especially companies or those with more than one line.

However I imagine that (as per 21CN) there will still be provision for simple, analogue line for end users that don't need anything more fancy.

My point was that they won't be trying to put VoIP over a line that can only do 56k voice maximum. Those lines will stay analogue as they are now.

I think a lot of people have missed the point on this. As I read it, the proposal is to replace the core infrastructure with VoIP based technology - ie. the circuits between exchanges. Existing POTS lines will still be used back to users to terminate calls. This is already in progress in the UK - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_21CN.

Thank you for pointing this out - I was going to make the same point myself. Everyone seems to be having a go at Sony, where as they aren't technically doing anything wrong, or that any other manufacturer would. Of course they might consider replacing consoles after 1 year themselves for PR purposes, but really customers should be going to the retailer.

As pointed out, Sony don't release official failure rate figures in common with other manufacturers and so it's difficult to say what the industry average rate is. However even with the rate being suggested, the PS3 is far more reliable than XBox 360 was over the same period and therefore I woudl contend that the PS3 experiences below average failure for the type of hardware. I've excluded the Wii as it utilises very much different hardware - Nintendo were very clever in recognising that you don't need top end hardware to make a good product.

If even says that you might want to download it on another machine:

"Note If you are not on the computer that has the problem, you can save the automatic fix to a flash drive or to a CD and then run it on the computer that has the problem."