Right. Manned by a pair of people inside a bunker that would take days to breach from the outside -- by design. One of the goes nuts and kills the other, he's got plenty of time to rig shit. Someone on the surface would have to notice this, and then get maintenance crews to the site(s) and into the silo(s) to physically disable the launchers. Every step in that chain is measured in multiple HOURS -- assuming anyone outside even notices before a missile comes flyin' out.

And if the stories are true, for a very long time, the silo launch codes were (still???) set to zero in protest to having those installed in the first place.

All this assumes a mad man in a silo couldn't figure out how to bypass the proven lax security measures and light one off on his/her own.

So I should be able to demand Verizon install ("host") my server(s) for free as well? Not going to happen.

Netflix is a FOR PROFIT BUSINESS. They can pay for services just like everybody else. (speaking as Verizon) Why should I bear the cost of hosting their business? It isn't costing me customers. And I'm sure as hell not going to give those asshats at Cogent anything; they're being paid boatloads by Netflix but won't buy the interconnects to support 'em.

Yes, there are small(ish) ISPs hopping on the Open Connect bandwagon. For them, it's a cost effective solution vs. the alternatives -- lost customers, or additional expensive bandwidth. Verizon (et. al) simply aren't going to play those games: Cogent can buy the bandwidth necessary to support their customers, or Netflix can find a different (preferably direct) path.

They have (had?) more than one provider. They have their own ASN - AS2906. It's readily apparent they suck at traffic engineering. (or they let it happen to try to push Open Connect.)

Netflix has other ISPs, and significant traffic engineering power at their disposal to get traffic to flow how they like. The simple fact that people could "VPN around" the congestion is proof Netflix could have used a different path to that user. However, it's easier to whine to the media in lame attempts to get Open Connect in the door. (i.e. host our business for free.)

Plus, they bought bandwidth from some of the cheapest providers around, who everyone knows isn't going to care when they fail to deliver. (Cogent is infamous for "peering disputes".)

Not "for free". Settlement Free Peering is based on a mostly balanced flow of traffic. The instant that ratio moves from 1:1 to 100:1 (as happened when Netflix switched to their in-house CDN), "free" isn't in the room anymore.

The reason for turning the crank was not to "charge them", but to generate the ring voltage -- to make a light bulb illuminate at the switch board where the operator is sitting.

They have, but those mechanical watches are very expensive, and are by definition a "chronometer". (designed to meet a certain precision) The crap you find in the checkout lane at Wal-mart will be cheap (sometime less than $3) and incredibly inaccurate.

(Even the $7 digital crappers are super inaccurate. The one we strapped into the race car is over 30mins off now, after just a few months. It's sufficient to measure 2hrs, but then so's the gas tank.)

It was more a factor of cheaper, and easier to mass produce, than "better". Granted, it's a lot easier to make a quartz watch accurate than a mechanical one.

Linus has nothing to do with that shit. And for the record, Red Hat has been renaming interfaces based on the ifcfg-XXX contents for years. (eth0 is MAC X, if X isn't present in the system, you won't have an eth0) udev adds a second layer to that "stupid" by adding "persistence" everywhere -- turning that crap off is pretty simple, once you know to do it.

...than the $65 you already stated you are willing to spend to get her internet in her room.

Enough said.