215 of The Patriot Act, The NSA, The CIA, The FBI, DHS and the following individuals who shall remain nameless. Without whose contributions, there would be no "ethical" paid hacking as a career, endless amounts of American civil liberties, no war on ter-r. Think any agencies will be doing some recruiting there?

I would run into this all the time from our cabinet and cloud customers in Level3. The question or accusation was always the same. "How do I know I am getting a 100Mbps or a 1Gbps handoff from you guys?" "I just tested and I can only get X amount of bandwidth, just look at my Cacti graphs and you will see I am not getting the full amount I am paying for".

So after a short explanation of how a single connection to their server will never fill up the pipe, I would have them run the test, or I would login to their server and run the test for them, while having them monitor the Cacti graph. Cachefly and a few other CDNs have a 100mb.bin and 1000mb.bin files that are not compressible and are not affected by WAN accelerators, etc... So, the trick was to start clicking on the files for download to the server as fast as you could, and watch the pipe fill... most often, their RDP, or whatever remote solution they used, would get so lagged, they thought the server was dying. The files would finish downloading and the remote connection would be normal again.

Me: "What does Cacti show now?" Them: "Thanks, I am going to use that test on everything from now on, very cool". I would look at the Cacti graph afterwards and you see what you expect, a steep 90 degree hill of all green for a few minutes and then back to the 1-2Mbps sustained that they are used to seeing. There may be better ways, but I never had a customer argue with me after using this method and seeing the results in Cacti.

As part of my job some years ago, I would routinely visit Level3 data centers across the US. We were a simple stub network, but where I usually plugged my laptop in, was only a hop a way from the Level3 core routers at each facility. Everything was gigabit, and very fast, but not as fast as you would think, being that close to the backbone. I had to use our own DNS servers for resolution, which were not available in every facility, and, page loads were fast, but you could tell you were always waiting on the web servers to deliver the content. Point: Sometimes raw speed is not where it is at. There is something to be said about an ISP having massive amounts of cache/caching servers and a speedy DNS infrastructure.

Texan Republican Politicians learn to speak out of both sides of their mouth simultaneously, at a young age. This should give you some idea of how completely over-run the TX political system is with right-wing fundamentalists. Nobody is willing to pick it up and run with it as a violation, because they are ALL on the same team. Wendy Davis and Leticia Van De Putte may get voted in, but that is a long-shot given how dug in the conservatives are. Ask Tesla motors what they believe about "Texas is open for business"... Typical Perry douchebaggery, and large campaign donations by the Auto Dealers Association. But hey, we have a liquor store, title loan and fast food restaurant on every corner.

Stay as far away as you can from TX. Perry may be the biggest liar in the history of politics. As one redditor so elegantly put it about someone, I will say the same about Perry. He is a Nimitz Class DoucheCanoe

The internet... where TX children start to unlearn what they were taught in school.

Native Texan here, 42 years old, I can say this is 100% accurate and I am thoroughly disgusted with my state. They are not trying to remove the separation of church and state, they have obliterated it altogether. You may have to live here to understand how bad the far right-wing fundies have wormed their way in to every aspect of social life here in TX, but you won't have to live here for long to get it. Pushing the religious ideologies, through the use of law, is alive and well in TX. In 2010, lobbyists spent 43 million dollars on Ideological/single issues, and that is just what is accounted for. When I visit my dentist, they have a certain hygienist that thinks she is being coy, and without fail, pings me about my beliefs... best answer is no answer. Fortunately, you can spot a fundie pretty easy... they usually have anti-abortion and gospel radio bumper stickers, right beside a Jesus fish or two. Not only are these people on the board of education slowly deleting history, they are proud and smiling about it. They believe it is a real accomplishment that they have made for the citizens of Texas, and they absolutely understand the impact it has on the rest of the nations textbook purchases. I tried to find the picture that was snapped as they voted on a certain science textbook a few years ago, it was almost unanimous, and you could see the shit-eating grins on their faces. Just disgusting, and the ignorance runs rampant. Folks, their is a reason TX ranks 50th in a couple of key areas. Number of minimum wage jobs and number of citizens without health insurance.

Two of the smartest /.'s here. Great minds think alike, we just don't always get modded up.

Talking out my ass with a basic layman understanding, and no education to back it up, but here goes... Encrypt/decrypt what goes in/out of RAM? I have always thought a light sensor that uses the lighting of the room/wavelength/brightness as a means of generating random encryption keys would be useful. Or pull random info from your face moving around on a webcam, something that just can't be duplicated.

I know this is bad form to reply to your own post. Answering some of my own questions, after catching something I missed reading the article the first pass. "The primers were unable to detect DNA from two groups of vertebrates in the tank: the turtles and the fish with cartilage in place of bones, such as rays and sharks." Sharks and turtles are pretty big ones to miss, I hope they get this worked out, it sounds really promising in coming up with real numbers about the health of our oceans species versus the current estimation methods.

This is really cool, great use of modern tech! I am curious as to which species they could not detect, and why they think that is? Too small of a population? Too small in size? Sampling size possibly not big enough? It seems like they would want to answer these questions as well.

They don't want to get shit on by the bird(s) in front!?

Guaranteed, there are people trying to figure out how to give him a dirt-nap, or figuring out who they can pay to do it. With the sentencing delayed, it appears he is not through making lifelong enemies. I see some witness protection in his future, if not already to some degree (the monitored phone, computer, etc...) ...I am sure the feds would know instantly if something happened or he was on the move.

The conclusions I read sounded like science fiction. I try very hard to get on-board and understand what is being explained, even for a layman like myself, I can usually wrap my head around a good portion of science on Slashdot. The claims being made come from a very small observation window, IMO. ...Sorry, that does not seem like enough time to develop anything resembling a reasonable scientific conclusion. For contrast, I got this from the tele watching Professor Andrea Ghez. Before she dared go on international media with her proof of objects orbiting a black hole, she collected 10+ years of data. She undoubtedly believed she was correct, well before the ten year mark, but, she waited, bided her time, and when she showed the orbit of these objects around the black hole, there was simply no argument against her proof. I wish more science was like that, but I understand the need for the theoretical side of it. This just reeks of sensational journalism, more than science. Also, keep in mind, we have the guy who "shot bigfoot" recently and is claiming proof... Oh, and that little war on evolution in our textbooks. *sigh*

There is little doubt in my mind, some of the best and brightest, the people writing the exploits and doing the most devious thinking, were recruited from the floor of DEFCON. The military finally smartened up and looked at the talent pool, unfortunately for the American public. NSA recruiter: "Do you want to be in the shadows of the public, and do what you do for little to no money, assume huge risks with little to no credit for your work? OR, would you like to work side by side with other like minds, making 250k+ a year, company vehicle, paid housing, big bonuses for working code, and get to work with unlimited bandwidth and computing power? You will have physical access to devices when needed to test your code and theories, and, you will be completely immune to prosecution. Free coffee, sodas, meals, gyms, 4 weeks of paid vacation. You WILL NOT, however, be allowed to work from home, and, you will never have to take your work home with you. Sound good?" Me: "I didn't graduate high school, is this a show-stopper?" NSA recruiter: "You are going to be a real asset to the NSA, we value your commitment, sign here." I bet they never thought what they would be doing would lead to this. They thought they were strictly going after bad guys. Getting your ego pumped and stroked tends to make you forget who you are and what you once stood for.