Hmm. Seems to me their biggest problem is that they allowed clients with a known bug to become supernodes; if 50% of the network had upgraded, they should only have been creating supernodes from the upgraded clients.

And in hindsight (I don't know that they should be blamed for not considering this before), the number of supernodes should probably be ~100-150% more than needed to service expected load. That way, if a third of them die, they _still_ have more than needed to handle the expected load. (And thus, hopefully, more than needed to handle the excessive load without causing them to shut down).

Maybe you haven't, but I have. Well, LPG, but I'm not aware of any reason it wouldn't work with CNG. I remember the propane tank in the back of my dad's truck when I was younger, and the knob under the dash to switch from gasoline to LPG....

And this solves the keylogger problem how?

It doesn't. You still have to authenticate at some point; at most, it reduces the opportunities for a keylogger to catch the password (if you only have to type it in every couple of weeks).

In exchange, it provides phishers with a dream environment. The only way to be certain you're actually connected to your authentication provider is to use SSL and make sure that you see the lock -- and if your security depends on Joe Random User doing that, you've already lost.

Shalon Wood

Perhaps that's why he specified 'very slow' adsl? At my previous house, Speakeasy and Verizon could provide decent speeds (3.0/768), but there were several providers which only provided ~768K/128K ADSL.

At my current house, I have the option of AT&T, or... well, nothing, really. I guess I could get 3G service, but that's not exactly a competitor to DSL, based on my experiences at my father-in-laws.

Mind you, I'm only ~1/2 mile out from Clear's 4G service area, so I *might* be able to get decent speeds out of that. One more utter screwup from AT&T and I might find out.

What really ticks me off is that I can stand in my daughter's bedroom and *see* the town where Verizon piloted FIOS years ago. But they won't compete with AT&T and offer it here.

And why do these receptionists still have jobs after repeatedly and willfully violating the security policy?

I'm not joking. Once, twice, three times is grounds for education and maybe a written reprimand, but if they even get close to double digits, either they should be looking for a new job, or you aren't serious about security and should stop pretending.

"The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, nothing more, nothing less."

I have to think that this is because so many people insist on using dark text on a light background, which means that you effectively end up staring into a lightbulb all day long -- of course you miss things!

I see people talking about studies which show that dark-on-light is easier on the eyes, but every one I've actually seen data for was for _non_-backlit surfaces.

(Other possibilities include the fact that the spacing between lines -- leading -- needs to be proportional to the length of the lines, which it's not on any computer I've ever seen).

Um... yes?

Many things have been used for thousands of years. Many of those things have no positive effect. Many of *those* things are actively harmful.

You sound like a woman my wife had an argument with a decade or so ago, who insisted it was perfectly safe to give her children belladonna (and, yes, I *do* mean 'deadly nightshade') "because it's natural".

'Usability'? As far as I can tell, Ubuntu doesn't give a damn about usability, or they wouldn't have broken wireless on *both* the last two releases (10.04, anyone using a rt2870 based card on a WPA2 network was out of luck, 9.10, anyone using a WPA2 network period (or was that WPA at all? I can't remember) was out of luck, because the version of NetworkManager forcibly installed (never mind that the copy of wicd I had installed worked fine, Ubuntu knew what I needed better than I did, so it helpfully uninstalled it) couldn't handle it).

I've run Debian *unstable* on my server for the last decade or so, and I've never had this kind of problem.

You're absolutely right; that's why people attempting to make perpetual motion machines are respected members of the scientific community.

Oh, wait....

Really....

Seems to me that as soon as the next copy of Madden 09 is sold, EA has committed fraud, then.

It's doing no such thing. People may be using it as an excuse to build an empire or do stupid things, but that's not the fault of SOX. I worked for a *VERY* large financial company (the overall IT budget, across all branches, businesses, etc, was measured in the *billions* of dollars), and not once were we stopped from doing anything because of SOX. Not once was it even an issue, either.

Put the blame where it belongs, on stupid people. Then fire them.

Opposing DRM is most definitely a moral position, on any number of grounds, starting with the ones you don't want to acknowledge down to the less obvious ones, such as opposing anything that makes life more difficult without providing any benefit or opposing the conflation of 'buy' with 'rent', as you never actually buy anything with DRM, you simply rent it.

Feel free to pretend you aren't doing anything wrong when you say there's nothing wrong with DRM. Just be aware that that's exactly what you're doing -- pretending.

No, that's the maximum you can get over the period you paid for -- one month. You don't pay for your service in 15-minute chunks.