I've worked on computers from time to time and the worst are those from people who burn candles or that seem to have way too much perfume in their home. The candles leave residue just like smoking. Oh and don't forget the fur-balls when the computer sits on the floor with a cat in the house.

I suppose Apple will void the warranties on those folks too?

I don't understand your argument. You want to say that the vendor used off the shelf components and imply that for this reason the application wasn't worthy of the costs? In reality the hardware is a very small cost compared to the application development and maintenance. I'm so happy that vendors have been steadily moving to commodity hardware since I date back to years when special built hardware was the norm and it was an enormous cost.

Let me first state that I over see a large deployment of F5 systems and I have compared commercial offerings in this space many times over the years. I have a deep understanding of the tools available and see the work product every day.

Both articles are great for debate. Showing that FOSS and tools available could produce a solution that resembles a commercial product is wonderful in promoting the power and breadth of FOSS. F5's response is good but also a bit disappointing as I find they have much more than is covered in their response.

I'm honestly surprised that F5 responded at all as there's really no comparison between the solutions for real world work loads and support. First and foremost is the thought that these are only load-balancers. The term used most appropriately today is "ADC" (Application Delivery Controller). The reason is that they not only perform load-balancing but reverse proxy cache, compression, acceleration, tuning, and in-stream logic decisions.

F5's products allow you to create profiles for services that are reusable and easy to maintain. You can deliver new configurations in minutes. They also work with the major application vendors to produce proper configurations that you can use out of the box. iRules (TCL) is an awesome tool directly integrated into the product that as F5's tag line says, "With iRules you can". Even with all of the this power and robust tools you will see little or no impact on high performance applications.

F5 also offers the community DevCentral which, in my opinion, gives back to the community in a proper FOSS style.

I won't even go into the underlying architecture such as the TMM kernel and separate management kernel.

F5's article does state one thing very clear and I would want to emphasis it. Humans cost far more over time than capitol expenditures.

I believe that F5 has taken FOSS to proper pedestal in the industry. If anyone thought for one second that FOSS was toys and not to be considered for serious work loads then F5 proves them wrong. Cisco has been trying to chase F5 for years and are still nowhere near them. F5 systems are my swiss-army knife of networking and I'm proud to purchase and use them from my FOSS background but also know they save my butt every day.

What is news here?
1. A state acting in its own right to govern per the wishes of its people?
2. Free thinking and speech?
3. Questioning everything?

Would you like to teach children not to question theories or even supposed fact? I have this theory about cold fusion that I want to talk to you about.

Science is based on questions.

I would rant about states rights over the federal government but I'd take too long. Let's just say it's my business if I teach my children that Zeus is God and he'll stick a lighting bolt up your ass if you don't believe me. :)

Have a look at the Archos devices. You can pickup some of the older models with Wifi as refurbished.
My Archos 5 is my, surf, watch movies, store data, listen to music, and play games device. The current 5 and 7 are called "Internet Media Tablets".
With Opera as the browser and flash support its really a nice internet experience for a small device.

If you haven't looked at the F5 product line you should. The ability to use TCL language to write "iRules" and shear performance of even the smallest device is amazing. The devcentral.f5.com site is also great and allows you to gain from others experience. With an F5 in front the rest of the systems behind can be simple and cookie cutter with no complex setup. The F5 will handle persistence, load-balancing, and once you have your setup you can forget them for the most part.

For the FTP server part, you just need some Linux boxes running your favorite daemon and a shared storage for the files.

--russ