Those guys are level 2 ISP, one notch below internet backbone, except AT&T which is level 1 too. There is a very good chance Sonic.net is peering with one or more of the 5. When they screw with the traffic, they're very likely screwing with your traffic too.

I would assume that a car insurance company would be a Covered Entity as most States require the insurance to cover the cost of health care necessary as the result of an accident.

Allstate's patent also said the invention has the potential to evaluate drivers' physiological data, including heart rate, blood pressure and electrocardiogram signals, which could be recorded from steering wheel sensors. ... The recorded data may also provide an objective behavioral data collection system for third parties, e.g., health insurance companies, lending institutions, credit-rating companies, product and service marketing companies, potential employers, to evaluate an individual's behavioral characteristics in a real-life and commonly experienced situation, i.e., driving a motor vehicle, Insurer monitoring your heart rate?

That's a lot of big words, but all I can hear is HIPAA violation!

Protected Health Information.
  The Privacy Rule protects all "individually identifiable health information" held or transmitted by a covered entity or its business associate, in any form or media, whether electronic, paper, or oral. The Privacy Rule calls this information "protected health information (PHI)."12

“Individually identifiable health information” is information, including demographic data, that relates to:

        the individual’s past, present or future physical or mental health or condition,
        the provision of health care to the individual, or
        the past, present, or future payment for the provision of health care to the individual,

and that identifies the individual or for which there is a reasonable basis to believe it can be used to identify the individual.13 Individually identifiable health information includes many common identifiers (e.g., name, address, birth date, Social Security Number).
Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule

People didn't starve to death when the lead was taken out of gasoline, when farmers can't afford fuel and fertilizer, the poor will not be able to afford food.

And usually they're on another line, so if you want to talk to me don't call, then ask me to hold please.

I'm curious why these computers so willingly accept connections from IP addresses willy nilly; whatever happens to
deny all
accept (Trusted host IP)
at the firewall?

Well lets see:

Transparent Data Encryption

Oracle Advanced Security Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) stops would-be attackers from bypassing the database and reading sensitive information from storage by enforcing data-at-rest encryption in the database layer. Applications and users authenticated to the database continue to have access to application data transparently (no application code or configuration changes are required), while attacks from OS users attempting to read sensitive data from tablespace files and attacks from thieves attempting to read information from acquired disks or backups are denied access to the clear text data. Transparent Data Encryption

Summary: With the introduction of transparent data encryption (TDE) in SQL Server 2008, users now have the choice between cell-level encryption as in SQL Server 2005, full database-level encryption by using TDE, or the file-level encryption options provided by Windows. TDE is the optimal choice for bulk encryption to meet regulatory compliance or corporate data security standards. TDE works at the file level, which is similar to two Windows® features: the Encrypting File System (EFS) and BitLocker Drive Encryption, the new volume-level encryption introduced in Windows Vista®, both of which also encrypt data on the hard drive. TDE does not replace cell-level encryption, EFS, or BitLocker. Database Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

The major players seem to do it out of the box.

That should be

It's because consulting firms are unwilling to pay competitive wages for highly skilled computer experts in the US, so they must expand the H1-B program to bring in more foreigners to compensate for the lack of competent Americans willing to work for peon wages!

I get mod-points so often that I don't bother adjusting up from -1, but the mod system does protect the faint of heart.

Only one comment has ever been delete in the history of slashdot and that on court order due to a law suit filed by the Church of Scientology; so your claims of censorship are highly over-rated.

Europeans just can't process the concept of individual sovereignty and that rights and privileges originate with the individual and Governmental Authority is granted to the government by the individuals and Government governs only at the pleasure of the People not the other way around. Centuries of being conditioned to except sovereignty as top-down coming from God -> Pope -> King -> Duke -> Serf, makes the concept of individual sovereignty too alien; Government Bureaucrats like the top-down fine.

Sounds good in theory, but in practice kids tend to tune-out that type of parental advice beginning around 12 or 13 and it lasts until around 27,28; or at least hear "don't do" as "don't get caught doing"/

Don't worry, you'll be catching up fast, and the report of it will be considered illegal hate speech. Europe has enough drug and human trafficking to be approaching a tipping-point. With increased immigration, European Country's historical advantage of cultural homogeneity will turn into a liability and you'll be wrestling with the same problems as the US.

It's all mote, P@ssw0rd will get you into 50% of the cloud.

When people say Detroit, they mean the Greater Metropolitan Detroit Area, Detroit proper has lost 25% of it's population, not dissimilar to places like Ethiopia, Darfur and Rowanda; where as you mean Detroit meaning the area including the new General Motors data center in Rochester Hills I'm seeing ads and job fairs for anything IT, Software Engineering, mechanical and or automotive engineering. There's lots of startups and high-tech 50 minutes down the road near Ann Arbor (where /. started BTW) and in between. The cost of living is favorable in Michigan right now.