Thank you for filling in this story with some factual information. I \had wondered why nobody mentioned NSFnet. I had never heard of IPSS so thanks for that too!

In the latter 80's I attended a lecture at UTSA (University of Texas San Antonio) where ARPAnet was discussed. I remember a story of a RAM failure in an IMP (interface message processor) which caused a particular block of memory to fail and read back all zeroes. Because the computer it was running on didn't include odd parity, everything read back as zeroes, including the parity bit, and so the CPU didn't know of the failure. It just so happened that the routing table fell within this range of RAM, and so "this" IMP became the next hop to every destination. This, of course, made it a "black hole" router. All packets that came in were discarded because the routing algorithm saw "this" node as the final hop. This led to changing to odd parity (IIRC).

For those who would instantly debunk this story, please note that ECC was not in use in those days, whether or not it had been invented. Even big IBM iron only used single bit error detection, with no correction.

Nope. The Federal Reserve prints money. The government borrows it - but not directly. The government borrows money from the large "merchant" banks (think Citibank, Bank of America, Wells Fargo), who turn around and borrow money from the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve may "print" money to either provide the merchant banks with their borrowed funds, or backfill monies they already loaned.

By law, there is a cap on Federal Reserve profitability. All profits in excess of this cap in any year are remitted to the US Treasury. Here https://www.federalreserve.gov... is a report of those excess profit remittances to the Treasury for the last 10 years.

Think about it: The Treasury borrows money and indirectly the Federal Reserve prints money to loan to the Treasury (via merchant banks). Then the interest earned on these loans (above the statutory cap) are paid back to the Treasury. This makes US government borrowing less expensive than it appears on the surface. This process is known as "monetizing the debt". So see? Even when the US government borrows, it isn't necessarily true that taxpayers are on the hook for the interest payments (well, not all of it). The principal, however, remains as "owed" (for what I assert is "in perpetuity").

This stuff makes my head hurt.

NB: You (dear reader) do know that the Federal Reserve is a private bank -- right? It is NOT part of the US Government. It is a private banking institution charted by the Federal Reserve Act.

Technically it isn't being funded by tax money. It's being funded by additional government borrowing. The federal government spends so far beyond its means that it is nonsensical to say things like this are being borne by taxpayers.

So who will bear the burden? Who knows? It's beyond conceivable that taxpayers will ever be able to retire the national debt through their tax payments.

So you say, the Inflation Reduction Act will reduce the deficit, yes? Here's what the White House says:

$124 billion: savings over 10 years the Inflation Reduction Act will generate from collecting taxes already owed by wealthy people and large corporations, according to the Congressional Budget Office. https://www.whitehouse.gov/bri...

So if this comes to pass, the Inflation Reduction Act will offset a little over 40% of the outlay for this expenditure. Glad to see the federal government being fiscally responsible for once. /sarcasm

"So the last shall be first, and the first last."

IOW, those who neglected their financial responsibility are rewarded, and those who did not are punished (by comparison to the non payers).

was an image of what I imagined the Krikitt robots looked like (a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference). I think it was the "white" color that took me there.

Hmm. US Copyright law explicitly includes the concept of the "first sale doctrine" https://www.justice.gov/archiv...

To get around that, perhaps Pearson only licenses their electronic books rather than selling them. If so, the CEO shouldn't be using the word "sale" in the context of this blockchain idea.

Maybe copyright terms are different in other countries? Still the US is a pretty big market.

To ensure consistency in our deliberations, we must steadfastly remain skeptical of the claims of the skeptic who found reasons to be skeptical of the claims of the original researcher.

In other words, it's skeptics all the way down!

So the next problem will be customers that claim they didn't get a receipt when in fact they did.

... satellites in lower orbits (i.e. most of them)? Seems satellite operators will have to arrange orbits so they don't' cross through the microwave beams, yes? Imagine how challenging that will be for Starlink, Kuiper, and other dense LEO constallations? Could you imagine the disruption if not outright damage would occur if these "birds" fly through such a beam?

I have no idea yes or not, but wondering if adequate power exists along interstate right of way. Those stations within a mile are probably in populated areas so won't have as much of an issue. But what about the many hundreds of miles of interstate between metropolitan areas? I could see the $5 billion being consumed just trenching and running power, if it's not already present.

One thing I particularly appreciated about the remake of Battlestar Galactica was Admiral Adama's steadfast insistence that the computers on the Galactica would never be networked together.

Some of that caution would serve us well today. Everything does not have to be reachable over the Internet. Really - it doesn't!

If I were management in a company and found that a network admin connected the "out of band management" port to any network that could be reached from the Internet, that network admin would be immediately available for hire elsewhere.

Sounds like a job for Harry Stamper

He can't run. Consider his nationality of birth and then try reading the U.S. Constitution.

At the other end of the spectrum would be endless impact studies and mitigation plans, which in the limit would make any space activity unaffordable. Achieving a balance between "wild west anything goes" and super conservative "make sure nothing goes wrong" is what should be sought. Odds of this happening 0.000001 to 1 (rough estimation).