An interesting analysis. However, I don't see the same conclusion. These content providers are routing around the Tier 1 providers because they're too big. Yes, it's the internet at work, routing around the inefficiencies, but not because of T1 business practices, but because they get better, cheaper service doing it themselves.

These aren't new non-Tier-1 major backbone providers. They're simply behemoths who've outgrown the playground. They're not reselling their access, they're providing bridges into the other silos. To me, this is a disheartening turn of events. While I don't see any of these companies cutting off access to the other silos (becoming AOL 2.0), they're locking up access in direct business-to-business agreements. If MS and Google decide to provide QoS on traffic X, or entirely block traffic Y, it's a matter between those two companies. Whereas, should a T1 provider do the same thing, we'd all be up in arms. Granted, The number of players makes these kinds of scenarios unlikely, but this direct linking starts to hide these kinds of concerns.

I'm guessing you're a student, using your laptop at a coffee house, bookstore, or library.

At my place of work, everyone has a laptop on their desk (with docking station and extra monitor). For myself, I take my laptop somewhere twice a month; for the rest of the time, it's effectively a desktop.

Stepping back into my college days, I still think this kind of app is useful. What about stepping away from a study group to take a call? How about preventing your pr0n-loving roommate using your laptop to visit his sites and getting your PC infected with malware?

This is a concern? Copies of my severed head are in short supply. Hell, I don't even have one!

Actually, the answer is the same in both instances: Large installed user base.

Americans use inches, pounds, and gallons because they were raised that way and they can speak to almost anyone else in that environment with those units.

1000,000,000,000 bytes == 1 terabyte to the common consumer because they don't care to appreciate the difference. They may have been told the exact definition but it makes no difference in their daily life. Why should they care?

In both cases, what's "easier" or "correct" to the technical worker, doesn't work for the masses.

The article notes that the seized laptops were part of an order that shipped to 10 offices; all have been tracked down. Still, you're right, we don't know about other orders. I think it's a brilliant idea, the free laptops. If it's a software only attack, they have to be wary of those departments that reimage PCs to standard images.

The Oregon Trail is available at the app store, and I have a copy. :) I recall fun times from many hours at the local college library playing OT on an Apple IIe. While the Iphone edition is fun, it's been reinvented for the phone. It has the hunting, but it also has "telegraph games" (think Simon rather than learning Morse code), and you now have to navigate your way down rivers instead of simply fording them and losing a member to drowning. It's a good game, but it doesn't stack well to memories. Sadly, I've yet to die from dysentary.

No 'limited warfare'? Korea? Vietnam? Nicaragua?

And rather than say, 'no one was willing to pull the trigger' Plenty were willing to pull the trigger, but they were restrained by more reasonable men. Read RFK's account of the Cuban Missile crisis; the theme of restraint and grace regardless of confidence in personal strength comes across clear.

Agreed, and stipulated in my post.

The "everyone's armed" scenario is a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario. You can carry whatever you want; I'll carry whatever I want - nothing's going to happen because we're both armed. I disagree. Rather, you're going to try and shoot first to make sure I don't shoot first because I've got a gun.

Your description relies on neighbors or strangers to come to your aid. What's to prevent the burglar from also bringing friends? Or, rather, he chooses a time when you're alone.

The whole argument begins to lead to one of continuing escalation. This atmosphere builds a mindset of paranoia, fear and from the strain of it 24/7: stress. Is this the society we want to promote?

an often enough cited quote, yes. Let me quote this: If all you have is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. So, to paraphrase for this discussion: If all you have is a gun, everything begins to look like a target. No, thank you. I pass.

'People who aren't sufficiently motivated'; well that makes them insufficiently motivated. In short, that makes them someone who's unlikely to do something. If someone's unlikely to hurt someone with a gun, great. But this point is made as if revelatory. My thesis is that gun laws are there not to punish people who want to own a gun (as most seem to claim) but rather to help stifle conflicts before irrevocable damage/harm happens. With guns less handy, they're less likely to be used in rage.

Yes, you can use your vehicle in rage. But, if after an enraged argument with your wife, you decide murder is more convenient than divorce, you're not going to go to the garage and drive the car upstairs to the bedroom to run her over.

This argument advocates Mutually Assured Destruction. Did it work with the Soviets? Maybe, but then there was that tense Cuban missile crisis that a reserved, judicious attitude carried us through.

Yes, sufficiently motivated people can just as easily hurt someone with knives, bottles or fists. But to me, the point of gun laws aren't to prevent someone from getting hurt, but to prevent them from getting hurt badly. It takes a lot more effort to end someone's life with knives, fists or bottles than a firearm.

(This being /. someone's going to say, 'Knife? simple. go for the jugular'. A firearm is still simpler because you have range. You can run away from someone with a knife. To get away from someone with a gun, you have to run and find cover.)

True. But if one wants to increase the number of disks, expanding capacity, then it can't be done as incrementally as I'd like. Sure, I could just add 1 disk to your example, but there's no protection for that data. I could add two disks, and choose to mirror them; that works. But if I later want to increase the total by three disks, and I had mirrored disks one and two as an intermediary step, then that third disk has no redundancy. I have to back up all the data on disks one and two, delete the mirror and then create the raidz with all three disks. Likewise, jumping from 3 to 4 disks is similarly onerous.

I acknowledge fully, that enterprise operation means adding batches of disk at a time, and this isn't an issue. But in a SOHO environment, I can't grow as incrementally as I would like.

Resilver disks to expand capacity? wth? No, to extend your ZFS pool, you just pop in new disks and extend the pool. Alas, doing this, you have to add multiple disks at a time in mirrored pairs or raidz sets. When I first started messing with this, I was really hoping to add disks dynamically to a raidz set, but this is not implemented. I fully recognize that this would be non-trivial to implement, but still the idea of adding one disk at a time, as you need capacity, is great for soho environments.

Robot noses don't pee on your bags.

They leak oil instead.

Super hardon collider? Dude, if you're doing it that fast; stop. Just stop. It's really meant to be enjoyed.

Better oversight? Oversight of whom? It's not clear, project oversight or telecom oversight?

Regardless, while people feel cheated I think they're looking at the situation wrong. Inherent business conservatism keeps BT from putting fat pipes to all the little villages. However, if said village shows the initiative to back their grumblings for better service by seeking it out themselves, BT knows there's a market. Digging up the dirt, and not the fiber itself is the cost in growth, so naturally they're going to bury more than necessary. Once the fiber is there, it's likewise obvious to turn it on for customer use. Like it or not, this is the face of capitalism; it's money at work.

Does it give the end-user warm fuzzies? No. Should it? Well, that's another conversation. But, as LandDolphin points out, in the end, consumers benefit with cheaper service.

How could this be done differently? BT offers to lay the pipe to the community once they get X subscriptions. But be warned, X will be inflated because BT knows that 15% of the "subscribed" customers will back out (or some other significant percantage. as this is slashdot, no research into percentages was done). This inflation is may be enough for small towns to think that BT won't come into their area and the same thing still happens; they procure it themselves. In addition, BT isn't likely to want to promote such a program because it means answering questions and training staff when the actual implementation rate is very small.

No, it's not pretty, but it's real. In the end, what's there to cry about? They're not on 56k anymore.

Simply enough, they're firing back because with the popularity of slashdot, now every time some manager goes to scope out Big-IP or their 6900 the slashdot discussion and the original project will rise to the top of the search results.

Big IP isn't worried about this home grown solution, because in the end, businesses buy warranties, maintenance and upgrade paths. Something the FOSS solution doesn't have prepackaged.

Enjoy o3's article; it's a great project. Have fun building it, but don't take offense at Big-IPs defense of their product; they're obligated.

The best thing to take away from all this, if you're in the market for SSL offloading, is to print out the article and slashdot discussion, pass it to the check-writer and let her use it as leverage to get an additional 5% savings off list.