Xerxes was a pushover.

    Shodan was floating around space for a long time before Xerxes was given a shinking ship. Rickenbocker... Sheeesh.. and it couldn't even FTL

I miss running around the Citadel Station. Trying to survive and destroy the mining station from destroying mankind. And they NAME this search engine Shodan? Where is Edward Diago? and can I get my military spec hardware installed if I take out the ethical constraints of Shodan. Maybe I can get her to rapidly deploy herself into every device still using default passwords.

Most people don't comprehend the difference at all.

  WAR, the last actual WAR the USA was involved in was things like the "Korean Wars" or Vetnam. However, as noted by others, these "wars" we keep claiming to have, are in fact called... Operations.

  We redifined what War is, by calling it Operations we have change the way battles are handled, We no longer send in waves after waves of soldiers to fight on a battlefield with death as a certainty. Today, we send in specialized units, platoons, or groups of equipment to get the job done in as quick of timeframe as possible.

    When we(USA) wen't back to War with Iraq during Bush Jr's term, Americans were told this would nearly be a one week War. and technically, our invasion wen't so well we actually did have Iraqi forces taken over within the first week. The second week, was finish off, and clean up the remaining hold outs. Until we found Saddam in a hole, the Operation was completed. However, following the additional 5+ years of being in Iraq, we have since had two or three Operations since.

  Do we call all of these multiple operations under the one idenifying term "War" because when you put them all together, is pretty much adds up to one?

I agree, the United States hasn't really been AT war since 1945. And people today really don't understand the details regarding such. It is just easy for the media, and for most people to just call it a war, because Terrorism is War, and War is Terrorism.

My very point of view as well.

    I ran should have the right to 'talk back' to the localized powers that be. When someone refers to Israel as a sane democratic state, the first thing that comes to mind is how Palestinians have been forcefully removed from their homes over the past 70 years. When we talk about Peace talks, Israel has always been the first party to flip the middle finger at negotiations. Then later on return to the UN tables to ask for Peace once more without any intention on following through. Bill Clinton stated it very clearly when he was President, and even recently when the subject matter came back up.

    When you have a people who are willing to go ahead and sign their land away only to be equally recognized as such by Jews. Only to be told. "fuck off", we will remove you from the OUR land. Gaza strip anyone? A bit of recent history where Jews have been actively sabotaging all efforts at doing anything fairly.

    But I digress, In regards to Iran what other nation is surrounding Iran with ever increasing military assets, and is in a continued war mongering path to enact war on a moments notice if Israel decides to fire first? .USA. The most updated military layout map I saw from CNN was a little over six months ago. American military bases surround Iran, thanks to our involvement in the Middle East. Do we see any military assets of Iran surrounding USA today? Does Iran have assets in foreign countries surrounding America with the active Political threat of attacking USA with WMDs? No and No.

  Does Iran have a nutty neighbor who violates just as much of any UN laws that are enforced/sanctioned against Iran? Yes. Does this neighbor actively garner support from its allies to "war with us if we goto war with Iran?", Yes. So I would say Iran has every right to build up its defenses when it has active aggressors who are publicly announcing they will go to war with them.

    As for Nuclear power. Why wouldn't we as a world power, allow them access to Nuclear energy when we could provide them access to those resources that wouldn't result in weapons grade materials. Why prevent a country from using cleaner energies, and rely less on foreign resources. Isn't that what the United States has been bitching about for the past 50 years? Getting away from the foreign dependency of resources.

    Iran doesn't necessarily have a unstable government. They just happen to have a government that has a higher authority of Clerics who can dictate the rules of how government acts towards its society. The government is strong in Iran. It was able to subdue the rising power of the Green Party, which was attempting to change the way the Iran government was heading. Even the United States wanted to help out in defeating the oppression Iran was having against Green Party supporters. USA couldn't intervene because of our foreign policy towards Iran. If USA were to have helped influence the Green Party in Iran, the Religious Clerics would have used that movement to give themselves more power to oppress. Instead the green part lost the elections, and the Iranian government has held steady to its power. Howe is that an unstable government?

    American's used the same excuse when we went back to Iraq to remove Saddam. "Saddam allowed Terrorists to roam his country", when in fact Saddam was a ruthless dictator who would never allow any rebel type group to succeed in Iraq, it could impose a risky behavior of rebellion. Allow a small group of rebels to use your land to fight a foreign country, and you open your country to all sorts of hell in retaliation. Saddam wasn't a dumb person.

    What we have here is a nation full of one sided story telling. If I truly wanted to visit Iran as an American, Iran would allow me to visit. If I were to go on a pilgrimage to visit holy cities located within Iran's borders I would be allowed to do so. Albeit through a few additional hoops and rings to get through customs. Americans are allowed to visit China, and Russia, and we were nearly mortal enemies with those nations during the cold war era. Why is it Iran is still such an enemy when in 1974 they used to be one of our best friends? Because America hates Muslims. that is what we are told to feel about a nation.

    I believe Pakistan hates America more... and yet USA still sends over billions in support money to a country that doesn't like us anymore because we found out Osama Bin Laden was living there for a while.

Same here,

    I've had my Sprint service back when "PCS" meant "Professional Customer Service". The Sprint/Nextel buyout, then up to recent history, the T-Mobile attempt, only to be foiled by AT&T making a slightly higher bid.

  I''ve had my phone number from sprint (never ported) for 15 years. Its funny when people ask me today whats my phone number, meanwhile most people around me change cell phone carriers including phone numbers like they do changing underwear. It just appalls me how often I have to update people's contact numbers because they changed carriers three times in one year. (Prepay made this worse)

  I can't really fault/blame Sprint for the apparent drop in speeds throughout the years. I was also one of those users who used Unlimited 3G Data-cards, then WiMax, and now kicked off of the data-card situation because Sprint no longer offers "Unlimited Data" to data devices. (I've argued with better people who were proven wrong, Sprint's Unlimited Data is strictly limited to just the handset) Otherwise, an additional fee for tethering is now the thing. (Recently with Verizon losing a Supreme Court case, Tethering can't be charged anymore. So lets wait to see the rest of the carriers debate the differences between Data use of handset versus a connected device. (Net Neutrality)

    I wasn't mad when Sprint kicked my Unlimited Data Plan (Sierra Wireless Overdrive Pro), they were literally stuck between a rock and a hard place. I had a signed contract legally binding Sprint to offer me Unlimited Data, but Sprint's systems no longer had the unlimited data-plan in billing. So I was let out of my contract, and given refunds. However as for my phones, I never renew my plan. I've been month to month for so long now Sprint has to really jump through their own mess to make exceptions for me. You see, I pay for my phones outright. I'll walk into a Sprint store, and drop $600~800 for a new Smartphone, then perform a manual upgrade, to which exceptions have to be made in billing to add $10 fee to a plan that doesn't support it. (During the time when I added WiMAX to my services we had to debate the $10 fee situation. "Was this fee actually for the Newness of the device, or was it literally a added on fee for those who have Unlimited 3G, and want 4G added to the account.")

With my previous experience, THIS is exactly what pisses me off about Government contracting.

    I applied for specific positions before whereas I was over qualified for the job listed. First interview, I nail it, with comments like, you are just too qualified for the position, however your the best candidate I've interviewed. With comments like that, I constantly fall into the trap of the followup comment. "However, government requires me to interview two other candidates for the position." This is the kicker right there. The interviewer can just say anything at this point about my qualifications and even on the basis, that I'm more qualified than the person they already have in mind. But the last comment is what gives them the escape clause of why they didn't hire me on the spot.

    I never got offended over not being the pick of a job listing, knowing the overwhelming support I received in the interview process. No what pisses me off, is finding out the person they DID hire, happens to be incompetent and lied through their teeth in order to qualfy for the postion.

    My first experience at being told the lie 'You are the best candidate I've have come across, and I definitely like you as choice..." Only to discover later on, I was passed over, was at a private company named Affiliated Computer Services. I had worked for the company as a data entry person for 12 months, during that time I also assisted the Local Administrator of the building. When the Admin was up for promotion, he gave me three months notice before the company even knew he was accepting the promotion. So I was prepared for the advancement. With two extra months of lead time, I was also able to befriend the management, and ensure I was the 'go to' guy for IT needs when the Admin wasn't around. I even saved the weekend once by stopping the MSBlaster32.worm from spreading at our building because i had read up on the issue weeks beforehand. When it happened, the Admin was away, and the building supervisor literally yanked me away from my data entry computer to see what was happening, and let me guide the process to prevent it from spreading like worm did with ALL the other ACS buildings. As in, our building was the only building of the ACS corporation, that did not go down. I received recommendations, etc for a job well done when no one else could figure out WTF happened.

  Come day of my interview, the office manager explains the promotion process, and tells me I'll be waiting for a response within 1 week of my interview. A week goes by, and I'm told of the 4 candidates, I was the promoted winner. (You'd think that would be cause for celebration), 6 weeks later I'm still waiting on HR to finalize my promotion, only to find the manager walking a 'new guy' around my server room. (Which was a BIG NO), when it comes to people who are NOT the IT Admin straff are not allowed into those rooms. Not even the manager was specifically allowed to go into the server rooms without a admin escorting. Low and behold, the reason why HR never finalized my paperwork, was because a second ACS building was being shut down. The tech they brought in to take my promoted postion was with the company for 2 more years than me.

    From that day forward it was downhill from there.

  Later on I find out, they never intended on me to become Admin, they just allowed me to fill the gap until they closed down the second ACS building then to transfer the admin (who failed at his job multiple times) to manage. I quicky left the company because of the ethical delimas. Along with 1 year later the ACS building I worked at was closed down.

    The best week ever when I heard the news.

I do nearly exactly what you recommend.

  I have VMWare workstations running RHEL, all running SMBs so files can be shared across the networks. I eventually ended up customizing my favorite VM RHEL, running rtorrent, shared the files and torrents folders over the network, and whenever I want to download anything, I save the torrent to the network folder.

basic, and I don't need no stinking features. I accidently updated my utorrent in a Win7 to utorrent 3.1.x, while I do like it, and I can configure out everything down to just basics, I still don't enjoy the idea of ads (whether related or not ads of torrents) I already filter ALL ad content from the websites I frequent. I don't need another aspect to filter.

  Thanks to suggestions above, I can downgrade.

As you've said already, Windows ME, and Vista have been the shit releases of their OS line.

  Thus 8 will be the consumer tablet and phone OS microsoft releases, then by the time Windows 9 is released, we will gladly accept it, because it will suck our balls, and give us what we always wanted but never got in Windows 7.

    I've had to test for a possible roll out (if the powers above tell me I must do so) of support for Windows 8. So having tested Consumer Preview, to Release Preview, to I'll soon have a RTM copy to use. I can only say, the support for Windows 8 will be limited to tablet based devices only, and a very small select of Receptionist All-in-One touchscreen desktops. We are looking at a few Samsung tablets which seem to make the concepts of Windows 8, useable.

  I will probably go kicking and screaming, when the end users start demanding for their Windows 8, upgrades because obviously Windows 7 is old and now not as fast. People in Office Politics can push to get a new desktop, or justify why their current one is unable to get the job done. The tech is makes it work, and if so many trouble tickets on one machine are reported, then its obviously time for a new machine replacement. (It happens, it is real, and it fucking happens) My perk is I get constant hands on training.

Who else read BOFH?

And that is exactly what happened in 2000.

  Windows Millenium (ME) cam out for the consumer class OS, at the same time Windows 2000 Professional/Server/DataCenter/etc came out.

Next thing you know, everyone hates ME, Windows 98SE kept users functional through the 2000 phase until XP was released. However I was certainly taking care of way too many home PCs with Windows 2000 Professional installed. Many people had misconceptions about their computers too, some would tell me they were running "Windows 2000" when in fact they were running Millenium. Most people also fell into the Y2K panic/hogwash and believed Microsoft released ME and 2000 as the same product.

  I don't think Microsoft's current team in decision making, remember the past very well. There was a huge problem in how Marketing presented things, and what the product actually delivered. People pirated Windows 2000 Professional happily to get past the mess called Millenium.

I am going through this very problem right now in my office.

  I have a whole ton of 5 - 8 year old business desktops and laptops, adding a few just as old consumer class laptops, and I can tell a difference in software support DOAs. All my business class desktops and laptops, still have drivers that progressed through the XP to Vista. And Vista drivers working fine under Win 7. Adding the bonus, that Windows Update and improved tremendiously in hardware driver support. We have not had any trouble when it comes to transitioning our workstations away from XP.

  As for the consumer laptops, the driver support for some of them ended at "Vista compatible". The specs of these laptops are comparible to the business class machines. You just notice, when trying to go to Windows 7, these machines, often lose functions (Audio drivers, non-existent) Downgrade to Vista, and the audio works again.. This is where business's tech departments have a hard time adopting BYOD, into their networks. The support to keep consumer grade devices sucks.

    A bit of hacking around with chipset drivers (taking a vista driver, and just repackaging it for Win7, knowing damn well it works, you have to just void warranty driver support to keep the device functioning in the latest OS.

If I had any point, I would have given them all to you in some form or fashion. Thanks for your input, and you clearly have insight as to what this 'agreement' really means.

  I have heard random opinions about this situation, and most of them resemble your opinion as well. ISP will not be directly monitoring User's traffic, do so, violates a few other laws in palce. the AOL case, is a prime example WHY we will not have ISPs jumping onto the bandwagon to help MPAA/RIAA prosecute customers. From a business perspective, it would be detrimental for ISPs to be caught "snitching' on their users.

  The moment a ISP is labeled as a 'snitch', customers may change in droves to competition, thus killing a ISP in the process. I highly doubt this, because if Warner Brother wanted to go after its viewers and customers, then Time Warner would have been sending notices of impending doom to customers long ago. When ISP are forced to monitor customers' traffic, it will be FORCED. Non-compliance would result in fines, and penalties from the Government. Currently the government isn't the group of people trying to punish others right now.

Again this is about partnership. MPAA/RIAA being allowed direct investigation connection through the ISP. With this passing, it would only cheapen the process in which the RIAA/MPAA uses to catch users and send infringement letters.

I second your post!

    I worked for a company that promised promotions only worked from within. After about ten years of random CEO managements, whereas all upper management was interchangable. Eventually The Board of Directors setup new rules, and no longer was employment a thing about promotion for work well done. It became, who has the paperwork to bullshit their way into their position.

    We had a district manager from Blockbuster think operating a Radioshack district was like a rental business. Radioshack began to carry music, and DVDs and less components and parts. The general trend of Radioshack kept going down hill because the Len Roberts principles had turned upside down.

    As for smaller companies, I worked in a manager structure that was nothing BUT friends of friends. Any employee that wasn't friends of middle or upper management did not keep their jobs for very long. Eventually so many employees left, management was forced to go back to work. And a fundamental change in attitude happened. I left just in time, After my projects were finished, I was contractor for follow up jobs. Witnessed literally the self destruction of a company from within.

I cant wait for the first government worker security clearance/pay-grade fights begin at these checkpoints.

    See what happens when someone who works in another form of government gets harassed or someone they are with gets the treatment by TSA. "I've got a GS something something security clearance, I fucking have a paygrade 10x what you make you Fucking TSA overpaid rental cop!" When a TSA supervisor arrives, the same pissed off government employee takes the next TSA agent to task because they are STILL lower level government paid autobots.

    This is where i have a very strange irk when I see US servicemen in uniform AND with badges in sight, get the same treatment as common passengers. About a year ago, even Airline Pilots had to go through the same TSA treatment. Yet the way we handle these things its like we need to create a law that stops this. Versus realizing, this never existed in the first place until this agency was formed. The problems we have today are much like problems we have had since the dawn of time, yet we have to make some form of government agency to make sure the newly created rules apply.

I am of the same concern. I have long past my two year contract with sprint. Let alone I've been a loyal sprint customer for 12 years.

    My 3G/4G Overdrive modem has gone through 3 batteries within its two years of use, But I've relied on its Unlimited data plan because of my constant traveling. When Sprint began to throttle its 3G speed I was forced to move to 4G, adding the extra 20 bucks a month to add it. I haven't been unsatisfied with the 4G speeds thus far, but this 'announcement' takes the cake.

    Every other company has dropped their unlimited plans, and went with caps, and overcharges. I Seriously WILL leave Sprint if they pull this 'announcement' to the public eye.

    I read the article, because I seriously do rely on the unlimited data part of my mifi data plan. I have no need to use my phone as a hotspot, when I rely on a mifi device to provide internet access to 5 devices. A smartphone will not provide that type of reliable service. ANd Clearwire is a joke. When Sprint is going to dump WiMax for LTE in a few years, I fully expect the 4G/LTE spectrum to be tested for all users. By now all these companies should know what the end user wants/needs/expects from a full speed wireless connection being advertised as the next step solution for cutting the wires.

  If they promote this service in the beginning, and then turn surprised when people use it, Its not the consumers fault the CEOs, and Marketing didn't consult with the Engineers correctly.

    This is just outright show in tell, for how the media industry does not want media provided equally through internet devices. This shit got to stop.

  I'll wait to see what I receive in the mail from sprint. Two months ago, I finally received my letter stating Sprint finally recognizes me as a Gold Premier member (as a loyal customer of 12 years, and monthly billing of 120, etc, etc... only to receive a new letter a week ago saying Sprint will be eliminating that membership program soon. IM FUCKING PISSED, if Unlimited is ended on MiFi devices.