Federal civil service workes haven't had a pension in decades - CSRS was closed to new government workers in 1987, all they get now is FERS which really is no different than any other 401(k). The days of the government pension are pretty much dead (unless you're a congress critter that is).

Not necessarily....hit the hydrazine tank and methinks things will go boom!

Actually, I believe in that case the trajectory does not change - space-time is distorted such that it appears the beam would bend toward the black hole...

ROFL! Oh to have mod points today....

Fair enough, poor word choice - was meant to be in the abstract and referencing common/average US pricing.

Nope - a static IP for residential will normally cost you like $5/month more where business class will normally cost you like $200/month more...

I didn't say illegal - I said violated the TOS/AUP which means they can terminate your account for breach of contract. In theory, BitTorrent, Skype, or hell, even BattleNet could fall under the clause of most residential TOS/AUPs, but you aren't likely to run into issues there... It's all about economics and money for the ISPs, plus you can actually get a real SLA with business service (residential is always best effort)

You do realize this violates most residential ISP TOSs/AUPs in the US, right? Just because you have a static IP does NOT mean you can run a 'server' unless you have business-class service (and by 'server', I mean anything that accepts inbound connections offering a service....be it email, a web server, ssh server, etc). Now, will they detect it and do something about it? Likely not in most cases unless there are complaints, but I know a lot of residential ISPs now block SMTP to deal with spam malware (forcing you to use the submission ports instead or webmail, but breaking running a SMTP server). Frankly, I do what you suggest, but I have a business-class line run into my house (have for the past 15+ years) for exactly the reasons above...

I tried the Google stuff for a day....then I uninstalled it because I didn't like the 8 billion ET-call-homes it did non-stop (even when not in use) that LittleSnitch told me it was doing...

Which in many cases is backhauled VOIP or compressed to the point of being as bad as Skype these days....the days of pure copper between you and the other party are pretty much dead...

Um, wrong direction dude....they were going FROM Cuba, not TO Cuba...

That is LAUGHABLY funny. No open source router is even close to core-router speeds. Yes, a lot of "core routers" are build on open source technologies, but only so much as using Linux or *BSD as the OS...all have custom/proprietary interfaces to the hardware forwarding engines. Almost all of them have custom routing protocol stacks. Don't get me wrong, you want a small SOHO device, or even something that can handle a corporate LAN, sure....but try doing 100 ports of 10-gig-each in a chassis...just isn't going to happen.

Wow, you're fine with biological weapons then? Crap, they're the most dangerous of all...

What are YOU talking about? The French would not only eat that, they would tell you it is a delicacy while snickering under their breath!

I have always thought the term "Windows Server" is an oxymoron...