If you read the parent another time or two, you may pick up that the premise is more like "obedience does not imply, or even correlate well with, intelligence".

A very interesting idea, but I think spam shows us that whoever actually developed and implemented such systems would most likely use them to intentionally skew the data towards something they could profit from, rather than adding noise to degrade the data.

How much of your spam is not related to making money off you?

I imagine this massive and convincing network of fake people would suddenly discover that they all love Axe body spray...

I won't burn too much more time trying to assert how many Cisco engineers I've talked to; I'll stick to the technical stuff.

"Sure, they can run a routing process, but they don't route. They only have an IP address for management" is simply incorrect:
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst3560/software/release/12.2_50_se/configuration/guide/swiprout.html

Do I need to paste command outputs from the Distro switches in my building which are routing between 96 different VLAN interfaces, all with IP addresses on them? Your statements are accurate for 2924/3548 generation switches, but modern "layer 3 switches" are actually layer 3 switches, capable of routing packets across network boundaries.

If you're referring to the fact that the EARL ASICs on the 6500 supervisors are separate from the MSFC which runs the routing protocols, then that's correct but specific to that platform (and 7600's, which are almost the same hardware). However that's still the routing protocol, not the routing. The PFC lives on the supervisor and contains the Layer 3 forwarding information, thus "routing" those packets (L3 switching really, but you don't seem to believe in L3 switching).

Classic "mls" is also much in the minority, as nearly all of Cisco's "multilayer switching" is done by CEF these days, not requiring a punt to the MSFC or "router" even for the first packet of a flow.

"The term commonly refers to a network bridge that processes and routes data at the data link layer (layer 2) of the OSI model. Switches that additionally process data at the network layer (layer 3 and above) are often referred to as Layer 3 switches or multilayer switches."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_switch

IOS on switches isn't only about consistency (else they wouldn't be rolling out a whole new generation of NX-OS) but rather about adding all the valuable routing and services code they've spent years developing to a wider array of devices.

I can run BGP and OSPF on a 3560 "switch". You can't tell me that's a pure layer 2 device.

I'm CCNP, taking my CCIE lab next month, I'll give this a shot.

Yes, the "cow goes moo" level definitions you get are "hub = L1, switch = L2, router = L3" but the reality is more complex.
A hub is essentially a multi-port repeater. It just takes data in on one port and spews it out all the others.
A switch is a device that uses hardware (not CPU/software) to consult a simple lookup table which tells it which port(s) to forward the data, and does so very fast (if not always wire-speed). Think like the GPU/graphics card in your PC. Something specific super fast.
A router is a device that understands network hierarchy/topology (in the case of IP, this is mainly about subnetting, but there are plenty of other routed protocols) and can traverse that hierarchy/topology to determine the next hop towards a destination.

Now, because of the protocol addressing in Ethernet and IP, these lend themselves easily to hub/switch/router = L1/L2/L3, but they're not really defined that way.

These days, most Cisco switches (3560, 3750, 6500, etc) run IOS, the software which can do routing, and which uses CEF. CEF in a nutshell takes the routing table (which would best be represented as a tree) and compiles it into a "FIB", which is essentially a flat lookup-table version of that same (layer 3, IP) table. It also caches a copy of the L2 header that the router needs to forward an L3 packet. The hardware (ASICs) in the switches hold this FIB, and thus allow them to "switch" IP/L3 packets at fast rates and without CPU intervention, thus making them still "switches", even if they run a routing protocol and build a routing table.

Meanwhile, when Cisco refers to a "router" in marketing terms, they're talking about a device with a (relatively) powerful CPU, which can not only perform actual routing, but also usually more CPU-intensive inter-network tasks like Netflow and NBAR.

Well, since nobody reads the articles, just the summaries, that actually seems rather efficient.

Except market share is the wrong way to measure it.

Apple's market cap is now bigger than Microsoft's, and profit-wise Nintendo's DS is even bigger than Playstation. They're selling cheaper, lower-powered systems but still doing victory laps with huge grins on their faces while Sony is trying to convince you that Playstation Move isn't just a more-expensive two-years-later version of the Wii.

Honestly, deep down, do you really think that two years from now the iPhone will no longer be dominant, just because Apple wasn't gracious enough about these antenna problems?

As a long-time Doom player... When I run into that badass, with all the ammo I can possibly carry, and I empty ALL of it into that creature, it should die.

And here we see the moving target for "immersion" and why it's so hard to hit. Up above, another commenter complains "if I shoot a guy dead in the face (I'm looking at YOU, EA and MoH series) then they should fricking die" - a large number of bullets doesn't really seem to improve immersion. Meanwhile, if the enemy is a tank - an actual tank, with thick armor - and shooting it with your 9mm pistol doesn't penetrate the armor, then shooting it 137 times shouldn't solve the problem by depleting hit points.

This problem actually stumped me for a while in Crysis. At one point, you're on foot and tasked with destroying some tanks. Nothing I did to them - even rocket launchers, appeared to harm them. I finally resorted to Google. Turns out, I had to shoot them with the rocket launcher... three times. No apparent damage after the first one, but three is the magic number. Shooter veterans - yourself included - are likely nodding along "well duh, some bosses take a bunch of shots." But this makes no more consistent or real-world sense than the indestructible wooden doors.

Not sure why the first commenter god modded to zero, but as a network engineer I'll second his statement.
Routers and switches, server load balancers, firewalls, servers, HVAC, and redundant high-bandwidth links to the Internet constitute significantly more expense than "just electricity".

Of course in aggregate and spread across the cost of many game purchases, there's still savings there over the physical distribution, else it wouldn't be a viable business model. Still, try not to fall into the trap of thinking that it's "practically free" for Xbox Live or Steam or Impulse or D2D to serve your games...

And that right there is why Zuckerburg will keep making millions and the answer to "Can Slashdotters predict where social networking is going?" is "no."

domestic or foreign isn't the point as much as domestic CAPACITY, which decreases dependence on, not use of, foreign oil

Except that if domestic suddenly became less used, that capacity would start to vanish. The companies and workers wouldn't just build new wells and refineries and hang out around them waiting patiently for someone to start buying again. Sure, the oil itself would still be there under the ground, but then if some world event (war, natural disaster, etc) disrupted our source of foreign oil, it would take decades to get new domestic drilling and refining capacity approved and built.

None of this makes wind (or nuclear, or solar, etc) power a bad idea, but trying to sell it with nationalist rhetoric about how it'll make us all strong and independent from those nasty foreigners is silly.

Meanwhile, the problem with the summary is that it's not really a choice between oil and wind (and certainly not between foreign oil vs wind). There's two large scale choices here - oil vs electric for cars, and coal vs wind (or nuclear or solar, etc) for generation. They operate independently. You can keep driving your oil-based car while we reduce our usage of coal, or you can plug your electric car right into our existing coal-based infrastructure.

No, they are not. They might want to, but they're not FORCED to do this.

Yes, they are. If you work for a company with more than 10,000 employees (as I do), and if the company's standard browser (deployed and supported by Desktop services) is IE6 (as it is with us), and they pay you to develop a new internal web application (to go along with the 20 others that are already in use and designed for IE6 only) - well... you make it work with IE6 or you find a new job.

Is this not the kind of situation that a Union would prevent?

Short answer: Yes, it would likely provide that benefit, but with several other large costs, some unforeseen.

Slightly longer: It's all a trade-off, no free lunches, so decreasing workload would require more spending on staff (either more hires as existing ones become less productive, or compensation for overtime, etc) which would either make the service increase in cost or decrease in quality. Unionizing isn't always a win or always a lose - there's some industries/scenarios where it's a good fit and others where it's a bad fit. For many reasons, IT is a poor fit for unions, despite the individual workers' desire to get paid overtime, work 35 hour weeks, and never get fired.