I know I never acknowledged you when my friends were around, but you will always have a special place in my heart.

Purely empirical of course, but evidence none the less.

About six months ago the company that I used to work for took a turn for the worse management wise. Without going into too much boring detail, they basically decided that due to the current economy (I was in Michigan working for a auto parts supplier), they could do whatever they wanted to their employees, including laying them off for a week here and there, cutting pay and mandating ridiculous work hours.

When I started there last year, I was on a team of 5. Over the course of three months, every single team member left for greener pastures. That does not count the people on different teams that have left. While I would agree that on any single decision it is only a whining threat, when those decisions start to add up it points to a bigger issue and will eventually cause "top-flight" admins to seek employment elsewhere.

Sure, you could try and use the router to match up IP with MAC, but spoofing a MAC address is even easier than spoofing and IP address. Or have we so quickly forgotten the days when ISPs limited our high speed accounts to one machine and we had to change the MAC addresses on our cable routers to match what was on our computer so we could hook up more than one? The main (and significant) difference between an IP address and a home address is that you have legal responsibilities regarding a home address. When you enter into an agreement to purchase or rent a home, you go in knowing what address you will have and for how long. Somebody doesn't come along every few days/weeks/months and tell you to "get your stuff, we are moving you to a new address". When you sign an agreement with an Internet service provider, there is nothing in your agreement that says that you will be responsible for what happens with a specific address and they reserve the right to change your address whenever they want.

D*&*%$*@# it. I hate when I forget to login in the morning

While neither a lover of Microsoft or Apple, calling Apple a monopoly is simply ludicrous. They hold about 3% of the global PC market (~7.7% in the US), 1% of the global cell phone market, and by some estimates about 23% of the Personal Digital Music Player market (Source: http://tinyurl.com/nm3m4n). Certainly not a monopoly in any of the markets. Microsoft on the other hand has ~90% global market share.

As far as why Apple is not abusing monopoly laws with their iTunes software as it relates to the iPod, for the same reason that Blackberry's and Palm's software does not abuse monopoly laws for connecting to their devices.

Don't forget that Oracle purchased Weblogic last year as well, so not only do they have Oracle+Solaris+Sun Hardware to compete with DB2+AIX+IBM Hardware, they also can compete with Websphere as well.

The loss of both these subs, while tragic, does not change the facts. The point is that neither of these ships were lost due to their reactors, but to other events.

Oh, wait. We do. Why are we even talking about building hybrids when the Navy already has more than 80 electrics in the form of nuclear powered vessels? With more than 5500 reactor years without an accident, haven't we proved that it is safe?