Some of us bought Smart TV's back when that was the only realistic option to run something like Plex without needing four remotes and a list of a dozen buttons that have to be punched in some magic sequence to make it all work. I want one basic remote to control the whole thing, one usable user interface, and for everything to be nicely integrated. That ruled out a ton of hardware back in 2010-2012, and a lot of it since then too.

Today, the AppleTV 4, with its Plex client and HDMI CEC capabilities, comes within striking distance of being as competent as a D-generation Samsung SmartTV running Plex. Which isn't saying all that much.

I expect that we'll continue to see more "Smart TV" gear because it is so relatively inexpensive to bump up the internal specs of the TV, which is already basically an oversized monitor attached to an undersized computer.

Administrators control the network between Microsoft's servers and end user workstations. This will simply turn into another example of "They think they're going to dictate what, again?" where Microsoft's store app on the PC finds itself unable to talk to anything back at the mother ship due to firewall or URL restrictions.

An OC3 might be $10K-$20K if you're way out in the boonies and need the telco to drag the tail to you. The large ISP's are present at major peering points, however. At those locations, wholesale bandwidth from a reputable vendor such as Level(3) can be had for less than $2/Mbps at gig commit; cheap Cogent bandwidth dropped below 50c/Mbps at gig commit a long time ago.http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1230059 The big ISP's are dealing with 10/40/100Gbps circuits. On top of that, a lot of what passes to and from an ISP's network is peering bandwidth. Nobody's paying the rates you suggest for bandwidth unless they're some small joint at the wrong end of an expensive telco provided circuit.

It's on the list I posted 40 minutes before your note. :-)

"Consider how you would fix X" is a bad idea unless you have experience enough to know what the possible set of X is.

Also, I've seen plenty of people who had "the tools" to do a job. I saw three guys mounting servers in a rack one day with manual screwdrivers. It was taking them a really long time, of course. Since I had a primary and a spare, I lent them one of my power screwdrivers and a 9" phillips bit and suddenly they were installing gear a whole lot faster.

We've got a toolbox worth a good bit more than $1000 sitting in our east coast data center (800 miles away) because if and when there's a problem and someone has to show up on site, it's always at an inconvenient hour like 3AM when no stores are open.

Local maps with the locations of Graybar, ADI, etc., marked (dates the toolbox to "before smartphones" eh)
A mini notebook
Sharpie fine points in several colors

Screwdrivers, nutdrivers - actual tools not bits, useful in many cases
Mini MagLite and headlamp holder
Utility knife (do not use for box cutting!)
Xacto (do not use for box cutting!)
6" Bit extension
8" flexible bit extension
Screwdriver bits of all sorts
Pin extractors for connectors that can't be easily extracted without
Scissors
Metal nibbler tool
Surgeon's Clamp
Neon voltage tester
Wire strippers
Terminal crimping tool
EZRJ45 Crimping tool
Set of 3 pliers (multi sizes)
Lock-jaw pliers
9" #2 Phillips bits- Made by Senco for a rapid drywall screw installer, these combine with a power screwdriver as THE single most used tool we have.
22" #2 Phillips bit - unobtanium but very useful for screwing stuff into rack rails you can barely get to
Large needle nose pliers
Curved long nose pliers
Other similar "larger" pliers
4" and 6" adjustable wrench
Milwaukee Power Screwdriver #6546-1 and spare battery - completely mandatory tool to prevent wrist fatigue, can tighten screws with the greatest of finesse due to the variable clutch
Victorinox Swiss Cybertool
Dental tools (picks, scrapers, mirror)

AC outlet wiring tester
Telephone line tester
Tone generator and probe
PDI CT340 Computer Cable Tester
Wire wrap tool and wire
Pencils and a cheap sharpener
Anti-static wrist strap
OK Logic Probe #PRB-50
Tool magnetizer - because the tips of all your screwdrivers should be very lightly magnetized, just enough to be able to touch a screw and lift it out of that awful corner
Digital multimeter
Soldering iron & solder
Electrical tape
Heat shrink tubing in multiple sizes
66/110 Punch Tool
US/Metric Hex Key Sets
1/4" socket drive set and hex bit adaptor for them

Tap and drill sets for common rack, computer sizes (6/32, 10/32, 10/24, etc)
20' Tape measure
Small Hammer
Rubber mallet ("compliance tool")
BIG flat, Phillips screwdrivers ("small pry bars")
Box cutter - utility knife with large handle
Torpedo level
Small drill
First aid kit
Dual D-cell Maglite
Test leads (alligator and hooks)

A decent clamp-on ammeter
A good labelmaker (harder to find than you might think)

Cans of air, WD40, adhesive remover, alcohol wipes, contact cleaner
2" Velcro One-Wrap in the cut-it-yerself roll. There are other options specifically made for tight wiring environments but this stuff is just overall a super-handy consumable.

External DVD-RW drive and a pack of blanks
External floppy disk drive and some disks (yes really, never know what stupid stuff a BIOS update for an odd system requires)
USB thumb drives

It's not just .com and .net. Once the US Government decides that ICANN itself is in the US, what happens when they want to revoke "bodog.ca"?

When I was screening new hires with a knowledge quiz, I would allow them Internet access - but only for the last third of the time, and after giving them a red pen. Sometimes it is knowing how to find an answer, not actually knowing the answer itself, that is meaningful. It was also a simultaneous stealth test of Internet search skills. The red answers, and ratio of red to black, was frequently interesting...

... or how close the designers came to creating the worst nuclear disaster ever?

It's much more likely that this legacy UUNet netblock was at one time assigned to DHS, and UUNet's hostmaster provided generic rDNS for all IP addresses in the /24. Then it was reassigned to Vlingo in 2007, and of course no one cleans house on things like DNS PTR records.

No real need to get paranoid on the basis of PTR records that are clearly generic fill.

We used to have this thing called Ma Bell that had the same problem: they amortized costs over decades. It worked.

It doesn't bother me too much that service providers would prefer a shorter timeframe in which to recapture their invested funds, but the problem is that they then want to keep charging the higher prices even after they do, make only modest further improvements, and rake in profits at insane rates. Where I live, cable Internet prices have been basically flat for more than a decade, and performance has maybe doubled in that time. It's hard to buy the crying when I know the bandwidth costs are dropping, the networks can handle it, and the companies are reporting record profits.

You can use high quality media; we backup important stuff on Taiyo Yuden DVD media and I don't think we've ever had a problem reading the data later. That doesn't stop us from making quarterly snapshots and sticking them in a safe deposit box, which helps to ensure that there are many readable copies of the data available.

The question is really how much data do you need to protect long-term. For us, where the total critical data pool fits on a few DVD's, this is fine. If I was going to back up 1TB of photos, I'd probably choose a hard-drive based strategy of rotating drives out to the safe deposit box.

So you take a merely onerous award that the defendant might possibly pay off and raise it back up to something that there's no way in heck he'll ever pay. What's the point, again?

Seems like when they find that the electronic crimes are not perpetrated by a lone individual, then they ought to be able to target them appropriately.

I worry, however, that this sort of thing would be used to justify ruining the life of some poor dumb kid whose knowledge was larger than his wisdom.