I am inclined to agree with that. There are a lot of great universities out there. MIT and Harvard are among the ones with enormous endowments that still get hundreds of millions in donor cash that could probably be put to better use at schools with less name recognition.

Reminds me of the scene from Babylon 5 where Londo explains that an action figure of him is lacking the appropriate alien sex organs and that is why is should be banned.

Yep, I bought some merchandise on Ebay that turned out to be counterfeit and Ebay/Paypals dispute solution was for me to pay to ship it back to the seller and then I would get my money back. When I explained that:

1. It is nearly as expensive to ship it back as it cost to buy it.
2. It would be illegal for me to ship counterfeit merchandise back out of the country.
3. I can prove it is counterfeit.

They would not change their minds and refund me under their protection policy so with about 1 exception I have never used paypal or ebay since then. I pretty much won't use either service unless I absolutely have to and would rather pay more than use them.

Basically the only fraud protection policy Paypal/Ebay honors is when it protects them from ever having to pay out.

First off the guy is clearly incorrect since this theory of his would invalidate virtually all regulation of say railways or power lines or gas lines.

More importantly, the guy is wrong because the property in question, not the cables/towers themselves but rather the right-of-way and the licensed spectrum that does not truly belong to those cable/telco companies. Those right-of-ways along public roads and along people's property underground are takings in and of themselves. The cable/telco cannot claim that regulating or placing conditions on the takings that they benefit from are themselves takings.

Seeing as 111.1 seconds to put a 101 key keyboard together has a labor cost of just 1.2 cents and will sell for anywhere from $3-$100 depending on the brand, model, and store it is sold in the labor cost is a tiny piece of the price.

You could easily pay the same workers $7 per hour and the labor cost per keyboard would only go up by about 20.4 cents a unit. I would be willing to pay an extra quarter for a keyboard knowing the work was done in humane conditions and the guy making them got a 1700% raise.

I've used the network equipment guides to harden routers and switches before and they are very handy.

I can't speak to how well they withstand attacks after that but if you follow their instructions an nmap scan basically reveals no open services (ssh ports have their own access lists)

I prefer the guides to tools like RAT because auditors get so out of date that you end up chasing down their rules to find out they don't even know about the last few years of security enhancements. Cisco's Output Interpreter is also good for advice on hardening your devices.