12 million I can reasonably believe. What I can't believe is Extenze claiming that they have "sold" over a billion tablets. I always wonder why the FCC doesn't investigate them for false advertising?

I've been to a Best Buy maybe a half dozen times, total. I recently bought a Brother all-in-one laser printer copier, fax et all. This was Brother's latest version of this particular model. I had thought briefly about ordering something online, but I really needed it right now and didn't want to wait. What surprised me was when I got the new machine home and setup I decided to check my usual sources online to find out how much I had over-spent and found that I actually saved money buying it at Best Buy, even with the WA state sales tax added in. What was less surprising to me was even though I hadn't really done my home work upfront, there was a Linux driver readily available, and it was a snap to install not only the printer driver but the scanner as well. I have actually come to expect this. I have an ever increasing pile of CD's still shrink-wrapped in their cases of the software that comes with the products I buy. They never seem to get opened. There is simply no need. I want the latest Linux driver available and I just download what is needed. I leave them unopened because if I get ambitious enough I might try to sell them on eBay and make enough to buy a six-pack or something. As far as my Best Buy shopping experience goes the only question I asked the salesperson was to point me where I could find a spare toner cartridge. I learned long ago that the "help" in most retail stores is almost always less informed than I am, and usually they are simply a complete waste of my time.

I have a .22 rifle from the early 1900's that still shoots the bullets out the barrel end. When compared to my "modern" .22 rifle they pretty much do the same thing.

One word. R-S-N-Y-C! Seriously, with the cost of hard disk drives so relatively cheap and virtually any old PC you may have laying around, which could then be hanging off some LAN at a trusted member's High Speed Internet connection. (Although with rsync you don't even need that really, just damn convenient)

The lack of offsite backup with this cheap and easy solution so readily available makes me think... tsk! tsk!

On my OpenBSD webserver I noticed a recent spike in hacking attempts. After checking with my clients with regards to where their web traffic and sales come from I discovered that virtually none needed to have their webpages displayed offshore.

I then blocked the entire Asia Pacific Network. I am talking about the entire CIDR range from the offending ISP. I also blocked select addresses in Russia, Turkey, Germany, Poland, Brazil, etc. Every few days I check the logs and add a few more blocks if need be.

While I freely admit this move is quite drastic in nature and not possible for everyone, the illegal activity has dropped off to virtually nil. My Bandwidth utilization is way down as well.

The way I see it, I am more than willing to accept the loss of 1% legitimate traffic for 99% that isn't. If these people can't play nice, why let them play at all? I am naive enough to think that if more and more people adopted this policy, perhaps the offending governments would stand up and take notice. They seem to be able to control whether or not their citizens are able to look at pro-democracy information. If they cared about the illegal activity as well, they could do something about it. Until then, they'll remained blocked and I sleep very well at night.