What I miss in your story and in the comments is the option "people calling who don't understand free software". I can imagine some users at companies 'thinking': We use this software in our business -> someone at our company has officially installed this -> we don't install software without a support contract -> there must be a support contract but I'm not going through the trouble of finding it.

Remember the claimed 'damages' from hacker attacks in the 80s and 90s.. Like the E911 document worth over 80000 USD or the alleged 300 million dollar damage by Kevin Mitnick.

Usually those 'costs' were caused by companies trying to make the hacker pay for all the work surrounding the case and all the backlog in securing systems done as part of the clean-up operation in the aftermath of the break-ins.

I wonder if companies will overstate costs under these rules too or whether they will understate them because the numbers aren't used to make someone else pay.

On a budget: remember whatever you do now gadget-wise will be old in 5 years time. But other investments can help for any future plans: enough cabling (CAT6 or CAT7) to rooms so you can wire whatever in those rooms in the future. Not just network and computers, but also phones or temperature/motion sensors. And enough outlets.

There is also the good side that this will bring serious bandwidth to places where dialup over satellite is currently the way to get a bit of Internet. Scarcely populated places in northern Canada and Alaska will appreciate the chances of a bit more bandwidth!

Overall I think the new design is an improvement and in line with a larger web trend to have sites easier on the eyes. Looks good here (firefox 3.6.13 ubuntu) and makes good use of the width of the browser.

Next up, IPv6!

According to Savvis invested in a new ipv6-capable network in 2006, to be finished in 2008. Savvis hosts sourceforge / slashdot (from the whois record). Yet, according to the nanog grapevine in 2010, Savvis is not yet able to offer IPv6 to customers. Time to put 'working ipv6' on the checklist for your new hosting?

``Browser vendors have the right incentives because users have a realistic choice of browsers. Flash is an all-or-nothing affair.''

And that is a real problem for users, and not just because of its effect on security. Only Adobe makes software that can handle all the Flash applets out there, and anytime there is only a single supplier, the incentives to make things better for customers aren't there. Adobe has been pretty nice with Flash, considering.

Seems to me there _is_ an easy fix: disable that behavior by default (why would you want it, anyway?). Then, for sites that are broken by it, allow it to be selectively enabled.

Of course, the fact that Adobe isn't fixing it and we aren't allowed to fix it nicely illustrates why having the whole world depend on a piece of proprietary software is a bad idea at least from a security point of view.

I too wondered "why hasn't anybody asked Mr. Murdoch about web standards for blocking bots like google", and asked such a question to the BBC who wrote the original article. The answer is simple: only news organizations like sky and fox news get the chance to interview him, and for some reason they never get around to asking questions like these that would not fit the views that Mr. Murdoch wants published as news.

Securely wipe them if you must

Securely wipe them even if you intend to store them for a while until you get better use for them or will throw them away. It's boring work, but you're making sure no private data gets out. Even a simple operating system installation has a store of encrypted passwords which can be abused.