It may not just be a reliability problem. It may also be a time problem. The time to restore 10TB for example may be prohibitive for many applications. That used to be a big enterprise problem, but now everybody can afford such things. In other words make sure you have a data protection plan and not a backup plan and that you've tested the system and your assumptions.

Lots of folks here have talked about backups but if you're company is really successful then restores could be more of a problem than backups. Large databases and system configuration can take a loooong time. Develop a plan for restore and execute it regularly as a test. Make sure management understands the time for restoration. Two other things--virtualize (that reduces the coefficient of friction for moving things considerably) and consider using Amazon or some other cloud provider in your restore plan to in case your cage/server room/whatever burns. Some of those services are low or no cost until you start loading things up. If you go the cloud route be sure to get a read on your traffic, storage and other billable numbers. If that's the disaster plan then if the numbers are of any size at all you need to run the cost by the CFO to make sure that it's sustainable.

All of these followed the work on packet switched networks funded by ARPA--all of them.

I like how libertarians and teahadists if that's the particular stripe of know-nothings just boldly stuff up. This is an oversimplification but early on it was mostly funded by ARPA and was looked at least initially as a strategic investment in network technologies that could be used for military command and control. The IMPs (routers) which tied together the early ARPAnet sites were built by BB&N under contract to the federal government and yes the universities were involved from the beginning. That's where the ideas but not the $$ came from. Go read the Wikipedia article on the History of the Internet. It's the 2nd unpaid article that shows up for a google search on Internet.

VMware's devices emulate standard devices that are included with the OS distributions unless you choose otherwise.

Link?

I wouldn't start planning that spree just yet, I understand that we also have drug resistant gonorrhea to worry about.

The last time somebody seriously tried this (1861) about 500K Americans were dead back when the population was around 31M total. Most of them in the area that was in favor of the idea. Today the result would much likely be worse. Don't be a dead idiot. Even if you did win, you'll lose so much financially and otherwise you'll likely wish you'd died instead *and* the likely result in terms of rights will be you will have less.

That will block out all the crazies. In this case it needs to be a little bigger than the traditional one. More seriously, I'm guessing that putting your router in an aluminum foil dunce cap above your booth would be sufficient to allow the clients below to connect. Put another router underneath for decoration. You'll have to experiment with how to make it look good but I'm thinking that you could take a cone or hemisphere made with standard lightweight tradeshow construction and cover it with aluminum foil from the grocery store and save yourself the cost of the copper.

They're like fire extinguisher salesman who rave about the dangers of fire. They sell FUD. There's I'm sure some truth to this, but let's not accept whole the idea that what's good for McAfee is good for the nation.

If they prove true to form, in the low part of the cycle resulting from shoveling too much of the same tripe for too long, I'm guessing they'll focus on having the MPAA after all their customers.

So if I read your post then I'd know that the western agencies (CIA, FBI or maybe the John Birch society, hmm?) invented the whole idea of the KGB inventing the whole idea of nuclear winter that was fed to Carl Sagan because everybody knows that famous physicists with PHDs are likely dupes of communist agencies?

C'mon Communist infiltrators? Really? I can see sophmoric but you seem to think the Lulzsec people are stupid or something. This is cointel PR bs like we saw in the 60s. Your clue, if you decide to accept it, is that the TFA didn't refer to the current foreign intelligence organizations but rather to the great boogie man of the cold war, the KGB.

You're a troll. By any definition that covers the Democratic party most of the Republican's qualify as well. If you support social security then you're a socialist along with a large number of very popular and successful gov't programs that have been in existence for longer than you've been alive. The Republican majority house, senate and president passed the Medicare drug benefit. If that isn't socialist then what is? The current trouble with our government is obviously agency capture by various industry groups for anyone who is paying attention. This is particularly true of banking. Both democrats and republicans are kowtowing to the bankers. And Ron Paul is still a racist.

Fascinating that you didn't seem to notice that this came from Bernie Sanders who's the only self described democratic socialist in the national legislature. Unlike Ron Paul there's no indication at all that Bernie Sanders is a racist (http://www.realchange.org/ronpaul.htm).