So then all someone would need to do is manage a downloadable host file to bypass DNS and continue pointing to the IP addresses of valid servers. Sure it might be a pain in the ass to manage, but there would be no need to rely on "authorized" domains. Your authorization would come from you explicitly allowing it in your own local naming service.

Windows Phones are so innovative that they have built in Hydrogen Fuel Cells that recharge by simply submerging the phone in water.

While that is an awesome option (no complaints about the product), it still sits above the price point of the Cisco route I mentioned. I was under the assumption that the author of the article was looking for reasons to go one way or another. In this case based on his intended usage, I gathered that the device would most likely be set and forgotten. While there is a lot you can do with a pre-built pfsense firewall that you cannot do with the Cisco model, most of the functionality the author is looking for is also in a device built for small businesses at a quarter of the price.

Unless you have a computer laying around, I strongly recommend getting an off the shelf solution using a router with capabilities built in. One good example I can point out is the Cisco Small Business RV215W Router. For $100-ish off Newegg, you get a full router with ACLs, QOS, VPN, VLAN, and more. If you like your current router, set up your current router to forward VPN traffic to this device. Best part is that it is small, quiet, and energy efficient when compared to a full computer.

There is nothing wrong with using a custom computer and throwing Linux on there with a software package to handle VPN, but based on your description, I think this would be a better fit unless you really want to go in depth on learning VPN technologies. By the sound of it, you just want something easy to set up and manage with little maintenance.

Because the hardware itself comes from 3rd parties like Intel, Broadcom, Realtek, etc. Not to mention BootCamp is designed to allow dual or triple booting of the OS. BootCamp has been around a while. As for experience with it, I cannot say I have any. I wouldn't touch a Mac unless I had to. This only applies to Intel based Macs. PowerPC systems run a different architecture.

Now if you were trying to be sarcastic, maybe you should flip it around. Traditionally it has been Apple that was opposed to anything but their software existing on their hardware. Their drivers are always more limiting than Windows ever was. Especially graphics cards. Just my observation.

I think the point is that the OS is still forced upon you with a Mac like the person was with Windows in the article. Technically since they are Intel based now, you should be able to install Windows or a flavor of Linux on Apple's hardware. This is essentially the same argument. Why should I be forced to use Mac on a system that can run other operating systems?

Given equivalent hardware, it always seems that Macs are way overpriced in comparison to other systems. Should that mean that I can get a Mac without OSX at a more reasonable Windows machine price? Even though Apple upgrades are free, how many times of purchasing Windows would it take to even out the cost of owning one with OSX? Since Linux is free, that cost would never reach the TCO of one with OSX or Windows.

Broadband was originallymeant to refer to the signal properties and not the actual speed. Another term used would be wideband. Generally the wider the signal (frequency range), the faster it would be. Go back a few generations of technology and you can see where having dialup would not be broadband, but ISDN and T1 connections would be. The latter would use multiple channels to achieve a greater bandwidth by bonding frequency ranges together. This is more likely the definition AT&T is going by from an engineering standpoint and not a marketing standpoint.

I would have to agree here. HTML would be left up to the developer of the site to make sure the copyright is encoded. They wouldn't always know if they grabbed an image off Bing or Google if it had a copyright on it.

Alternatively, DRM images like we do music so it cannot be linked outside the site(s) allowed to show it.

Saying that an exploit couldn't have been used in the first place is just nonsense. It would be better to say that with the adequate security and audit policies in place, they should have been alerted as soon as someone started trying to test for a heartbleed vulnerability. Action should have been taken as soon as they saw traffic repeatedly running a heartbleed exploit to prevent the disclosure of the information. Nothing can cover 100% and in this case, they were likely waiting on a vendor to patch their system. At the time the passwords were scraped, Juniper may have still been working on a patch (assuming the information that it was a week after announcing heartbleed). This should have been where the IT admins ordered the 72oz cups of coffee and stared at the screen for days on end.

As far as I know there is not a single solution to cover everything mentioned in open source. That being said, although Microsoft offers integrated solutions, they are still separate products. Your named features span Lync and Exchange. For the open source side, I would point you to Asterisk and OpenFire to handle the Lync side and you could probably use Open-Xchange to handle email/calendar (though I am unfamiliar with Open-Xchange). Integration between the products would still be limited though. One of the best distributions I have played with is called Elastix and combines almost all the features you are looking for. Not sure about the calendar aspect though.

There are a couple ways to set it up, but one method is with Exchange integration. In our setup, there is a folder in Outlook called Conversation History. All chat logs and call history end up in there. Lync will also show you some of the information from the Lync client, but older history can be searched there. You can also set up archiving to go to a central database. You can also continue past conversations from within Lync should you wish to.

Your alternative under the agreement would be to not post anything. I would hardly call that extortion when you have an option like that. I would never stay at such a place anyway and will start to look at any agreements I sign for such verbiage.

I still use Windows Media Center on all my machines running Windows 8.1 Pro. Though they may not be actively developing it anymore, I would hardly call it abandoned when they still support, update, and ship it. Though in reality, the main reason they are not actively developing makes sense in some ways. With Hulu, Netflix and other video providers now making standalone apps for Windows 8, there was not a need to continue development. There is a video app, music app, and pictures app that split the functionality out of Media Center. Everyone seems to hate Windows 8.X, but for my computers hooked up to the TV, it seems to work out well navigating from afar. The Media Center remote control also works for navigating the start screen (to a point). The only thing I wish Microsoft would do is split out the TV app from media center and put it with the other apps like Xbox Music, Video, etc... That is the only reason I still use Media Center.

Zune was an awesome product (still have a Zune HD), but just late to the game. Apple was already trying their best to phase out older style iPods in favor of the iPod Touch. Everyone was wanting either the iPhone or the iPod touch and killing the sales for the other iPods. Microsoft tried to follow a route of moving the Zune app to their Windows Phone platform, but they failed to have Wi-Fi only version like Apple. Once they did that, Zune started to fade out in favor of the Xbox title.

If I understand it correctly, it works similar to materials NASA uses on the space shuttle. By increasing the surface area of the heat sink, you get a better cooling effect. I believe NASA uses a foam made of 95% air or so for the tiles that are on the outside of the space shuttle. These in turn seem to allow heat in but can remain cool to the touch at very high temperatures internally. Somewhere I saw a video of someone holding a block made of this NASA material. In this case, having a "foam" made out of copper allows it to cool very quickly. I bet it would still work better to have some sort of fan blowing and constantly moving air across the foam.

Disclaimer: I do not claim to be an expert in the physics or technology behind this, but it seems logical to me.

It depends on whether you are running tagged or untagged VLANs. You are correct for trunk ports that carry tagged VLANs, but the catch there is that you have to have a tap or sit on a trunk port that can see the same tags. Both of these cases require physical access to monitor or make changes (or remoting into a switch). If physical access is a problem, you have bigger issues on hand. VLANs are not end all security, but to completely push them aside is ludicrous. Properly done, VLANs are a great augmentation to security, but I would not rely on them as the only means.

I mainly use VLANs with layer 3 routing so I can have firewall rules at the switch level between the VLANs which I put on separate IP networks. I avoid using the same network across multiple VLANs.