And it's not the same as what you can do with Linux clustering. Here's how it works. Bear in mind this is with released software and hardware, not the vaporous new clustering that you can only see at dog-and-pony shows (ie Windows 2000 Datacenter).
We've got a two-node cluster. Basically, it's two dual-CPU boxes, with a shared fibre channel array. The boxes are connected to the public network, they also are connected via a crossover cable to each other (you could use a switch or a hub if you have more than 2 boxes, we just used a crossover because it's more reliable since we only have two boxes).
The boxes are set up as an active-active cluster. That means there are two virtual machines set up on the cluster, so we can actually use both boxes.
The whole "Clustering" part is in failover, not in load distribution. Bascially, if one hardware node on the cluster goes down, the other node picks up the virtual machine that was hosted on the node. We've got to be careful not to load any virtual machine on the cluster to more than 50% of capacity or if a failover event occurs one hardware node won't be able to handle the stress.
There is no shared load balancing in a Windows 2000 Advanced Server cluster. The gentleman talking about the web server clustering is talking about a different solution, the Microsoft Application Server, which is Microsoft's software load balancer/web deployment system that makes a gob of web servers look like a cluster, as if you combined a good content management package with an Alteon LoadDirector or a Cisco content switch (whatever they're calling the Arrowpoint stuff these days). It's different software for a different purpose. The clustering stuff is for failover only.
If you're doing computationally intensive "stuff", and you want to load balance, Microsoft does not have a solution for that. The rep probably just knew you were doing something with "clustering" and that Microsoft sells "clustering", with no real knowledge of the fact that the clustering that Microsoft has is designed for something different than the clustering you need.
As far as "what would it take to get you to switch", I'd suggest that your answer should not overlook a statement like "Free licenses in perpetuity". Microsoft would probably be more than willing to hand you an eval, or even a few licenses for the current version, but the upgrade to.Net Advanced Server will be pricey. How pricey? Thousands of dollars, I'd imagine, per node. Evidence is becoming available that MS's pricing goal for servers has become to increase the hardware/software spending ratio to 50/50, so you'll end up paying so much to license the software that you could have had twice as much hardware. This isn't that cynical, actually, especially if you look at the new SQL Server 2000 licensing options for Enterprise Edition.
That's another point, if you want to use clustering, you have to buy "Enterprise Edition" products, like SQL Server EE, which costs 5 to 10 times the amount of SQL Server standard edition.
My whole problem with this incident has been RMS's apparent willingness to admonish in public. It's not like Miguel is particularly difficult to get ahold of. It's not like he's not a regular on at least a few public email lists.
If RMS wants to take the "Free Software Leader" approach, it would have been much better received if he'd gone to Miguel in private and asked "WTF?" instead of doing it in a public forum. Then there could have been mutual understanding and (possibly) a joint clarification on what's going on.
NAB filed briefs with the FCC attempting to block frequency allocations for both XM and Sirius, citing the same complaints they have whenever someone tries to break their cartel, typically intereference with existing services. It looks like these guys are on our side, not on NAB's side. I agree, NAB sucks ass, and they are a cartel, in some ways worse than OPEC because they fall under US jurisdiction and they still exist. This is another way to beat them,
not join them.
So, where are you getting the content for that Nomad?
Where was that again? Oh, you're either buying cd's and ripping them, or you're downloading them with Morpheus.
How much was that cable modem?
You say above that the content on your nomad is free. Don't forget you've also got to procure and download songs to it. That will probably take you more than a couple hours a month if you want a wide selection of current content.
How much is your time worth?
OK, now how much would it cost to legally procure and use that content?
Your analysis was great up until you got to that part.
I've got channel number, channel name, artist, and song title for almost all of the stations on my XM radio receiver. The only problem is that the screen's a bit too small. It is digitally broadcast.
Some of the stations do have commercials. The comedy stations, probably due to more expensive content. The CNN/WeatherChannel/ESPN Radio talk channels, probably due to the fact that they're just getting feeds from other commercial services. However, I'd rather listen to ESPN Radio, commercials and all, than listen to something that doesn't have the coverage and commentary that ESPN does. I doubt that either XM or Sirius would be able to put together a high-quality sports show, for example. The XM Radio news stuff is mostly just read off-the-wire, so it's not so great either. I just wish they had more NPR-ish news.
The music channels are generally commercial free. Some have commercials (on the order of a minute or two an hour maybe). Many do not (the decade stations are, I believe, commercial free). Some content with advertising, some without. I remember hearing that their alternative-ish station was doing an hourlong commercial-free concert last night.
There's a mix of both. If you have the service, and you don't want the commercials, you can either avoid the stations with commercials or (gasp) change stations. There's a hundred of them, chances are you'll find at least 5 or 10 that are acceptable to your tastes.
Mine's worked fine in rain. Haven't had heavy rain or snow yet though. I'm more worried about the antenna icing over than what happens in the clouds, I think there's probably more attenuation possibilities with antenna obstruction than with attenuation from clouds.
Keep in mind you're dealing with a more powerful signal than a satellite tv signal because they use less bandwidth (they can put out the same amount of power into a smaller amount of spectrum). They're also using newer sats, which (I would assume, probably incorrectly) have better power generation.
I have an hour commute every day. Combined with the occasional roadtrip, and I like having XM. When you add in the total suckiness of radio here in Kansas City, where we have one "All Pink Floyd, All The Time" station, one "Classic Rock" station and a whole crapload of Britney stations, some "Easy Listening" stations. No alternative. Not even any modern rock. They all suck.
I've got the pioneer equipment. It works well, it doesn't cut out, it sounds great. There are lots of stations with lots of different kinds of music.
I got it installed right before an 18 hour road trip. There's nothing like having music piped in for 9 hours at a stretch with no commercials and not having to change stations because "Another Brick in the Wall" came on AGAIN.
(Pink Floyd put out 20+ albums, why do radio stations insist on playing The Wall over and over and over again?)
The installation is painless, very similar to installing a remote CD Changer in your car.
Things I wish they had: Some kind of smart-card-ish way to bring a receiver into my house that doesn't cost as much as Sony's solution.
You're not a lawyer, fortunately for MS they have a bunch of lawyers who write their EULA's. They specifically bar anyone who clicks their license from suing them because their software sucks ass (I think that's even a direct quote).
I think you're the one with the wheelbarrow full of excrement.
The NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 change was fairly dramatic. Nearly all of the control panel options disappeared, replaced with the ever-crappy, crashing pile of MMC. User Manager and Server Manager, gone. Complete retraining for all the sysadmins who have to use these tools daily and aren't sharp enough to pick it up on their own. Active Directory was introduced in Win2K, a large change for large organizations, where even incremental changes are extremely expensive.
The problem is that you don't remember how painful the Win2K upgrade was because it happened two years ago. When your company does the upgrade, go hang out with the user support folks for a couple days. Feel their pain. Take notes, and keep them. Otherwise you'll forget how much the XP upgrade sucks in a couple years, when, uh, Windows YP is introduced, or Windows XQ, or whatever they're going to call the next one, the one with build number 6.X.
When they launched service in Kansas City, which is Sprint's hometown, there were very very few (like double-digit) folks who could get service. It was basically resold-DSL, and it had to be the highest rate DSL that the local telco could sell, so you basically have to live next door to the switching office. Plus, they were selling local and long distance service in addition to high speed net access, so it wasn't exactly in the best interest of Southwestern Bell to make sure that they could sell the service. SWB, which isn't exactly jumping through hoops to get DSL online either, is quickly being eclipsed by the cable modem service here in Kansas City, which is actually very good.
The biggest suck factor to the service was the marketing. It's been "coming soon" here in KC for at least 4 years. It'll be "available any day now". Crap. It wasn't just ION, it was actual vapor. They had sales people at every Sprint PCS store here, and they couldn't answer any questions about anything. My favorite, though, was the FAQ list posted at their site, which didn't answer the number one question: When are you going to take my money and give me service?
Oh, well. That whole Darwin thing. Sprint couldn't deliver anything, so TimeWarner and ComCast came in and started dominating the market. I kept hearing from folks that worked on ION that they'd be launching a wireless no-SWB service, but it never materialized, just like anything else with ION.
I wonder if you couldn't do a cellular-handoff type thing, with the router closest to the client automatically handling as much traffic as it can, and have other towers within range pick up the folks they can in the event of an overload.
Of course, the cell companies don't even get this right all the time (lots of dropped calls are a result of this not happening correctly).
This uses a 5 Ghz piece of spectrum. The antennas can be smaller or have more gain for their size, which would enhance range. This would be great as a point-to-point link with highly directional, high gain antennas (like a 12 element yagi or something).
Yeah, I have a great idea. Let's all surf over to Windows Update from our web servers.
Sorry, all of my servers are blocked for outbound HTTP. Can't surf from them. Why? To prevent people (or a worm) from installing unauthorized patches from outside our network. I mean, if you're going to allow surfing, why don't you just pull up Outlook and check your email while you're at it?
I agree, however, that I don't get Gartner's points either, but for a different reason. Attention managers: If you hire bad Sys Admin folks, you're going ot have problems. It doesn't matter if it's a Windows shop or a UNIX shop or whatever. Good admins take care of things, bad admins don't. Pretty cut and dried. This isn't a Windows problem directly, it's an admin problem.
The point is that it will help protect MY network. If it has a happy side-effect of keeping any other network from being infected for a little bit, that's just gravy.
We had so many infected machines inside our corporate LAN that we had a carrier-class switch go down from excessive ARP traffic for invalid IP addresses. Our corporate firewall couldn't keep up with the outbound connection attempts, we had to disconnect it from the inside network.
If we'd had this running INSIDE our network, I think we would have been reasonably OK, or at least less screwed.
Yeah, the next virus might be better, multi-threaded, whatever. But it'll have to spawn a thread for every connection that I grab. That's going to (hopefully) use up resources on the attacking machine faster than it uses up my resources. And really, that's the goal, to turn the DOS attack back onto the attacker. If this is even 25% effective at doing that, then it pays for the minimal hardware I'm going to need to put this in place.
And where, exactly, did I say we needed to declare war on anyone? I said we need to take people out, as in reduce their current and effetiveness to cause us problems to nil. I didn't say we needed to declare war on anything or anyone. For all I know, this could be a bunch of wackos in Montana, I'm not all that in favor of causing permanent damage to Montana either.
I don't recall a declaration of war during the American Revolutionary war, specifically because there weren't two soverign parties involved, at least from the British standpoint. (Having a declaration of war would have implied that America was sovereign, actually.)
While you can't have a war without two soverign nations, it is possible to negotiate a peace between two parties, and it is possible to have two parties that are having hostilities with each other without a declared war.
Korea, Vietnam, Libya, hell, even Iraq are all examples. We can find these terrorists. We will find these terrorists. I just hope they don't go quietly, because as much as I fear terrorists, I fear the ridiculous excuse of a justice system we have that allows other terrorists who killed Americans to be tried in the Netherlands, where they can't be FRIED.
Read, then comment next time. First READ, then comment.
For the record: Negotiating with terrorists DOES NOT WORK. It's like negotiating with a hydra: Set peace with one, and the others will still attack. You're making the broad and stupid assumption that there is such a thing as a "terrorist organization" with rules that all of the terrorists follow. It doesn't work that way. The "Real IRA" popped up after the negotiated peace in Northern Ireland, and all of the Palestinian terrorist organizations that used to follow Arafat don't anymore, because they just want to kill bad guys, not solve the original problem.
Germany and Japan don't seem to have attacked anyone since we settled that dispute back in the 1940's. I don't see a Spanish Armada any more. The British are still gone from the United States after the little hullaboo in the 1770's. History seems to bear out several cases where taking violence to the opposing force keeps them from attacking again. It also bears out that if you leave the opposition with enough strength that you'll continue to have problems after a lamely negotiated peace agreement: Iraq, Germany post World War 1, the Real IRA, Hamas.
I'm not finding a lot of historical precedent that bodes well for the safety of the US if we don't track these folks down and wipe them out.
And solar satellites would happen precisely...never. We'd have thousands of environmentalist wackos telling us that it's going to give kids cancer, fry some stupid-ass backward-flying striped wallaby or something, and it causes global warming somehow.
I know that's all crap, you know that's all crap. Try and explain it to greenpeace.
Then there's the fact that the scaremongers are trying to predict global climate changes for a 4 billion year old planet with 200 years of directly observed global data and about 5,000 years of inferred circumstantial and highly suspect data.
If you're really concerned about global warming and greenhouse gases, go plug up a volcano with your ass.
The bandwidth is yet another example of why it's not always a terrible thing to live in the land of the huge SUV and several industries related to raising, slaughtering, butchering, refrigerating, transporting, selling, and cooking cows.
We do a lot of things to excess in the states. Not all of that's bad.
Slashdot Mirror
And it's not the same as what you can do with Linux clustering. Here's how it works. Bear in mind this is with released software and hardware, not the vaporous new clustering that you can only see at dog-and-pony shows (ie Windows 2000 Datacenter).
.Net Advanced Server will be pricey. How pricey? Thousands of dollars, I'd imagine, per node. Evidence is becoming available that MS's pricing goal for servers has become to increase the hardware/software spending ratio to 50/50, so you'll end up paying so much to license the software that you could have had twice as much hardware. This isn't that cynical, actually, especially if you look at the new SQL Server 2000 licensing options for Enterprise Edition.
We've got a two-node cluster. Basically, it's two dual-CPU boxes, with a shared fibre channel array. The boxes are connected to the public network, they also are connected via a crossover cable to each other (you could use a switch or a hub if you have more than 2 boxes, we just used a crossover because it's more reliable since we only have two boxes).
The boxes are set up as an active-active cluster. That means there are two virtual machines set up on the cluster, so we can actually use both boxes.
The whole "Clustering" part is in failover, not in load distribution. Bascially, if one hardware node on the cluster goes down, the other node picks up the virtual machine that was hosted on the node. We've got to be careful not to load any virtual machine on the cluster to more than 50% of capacity or if a failover event occurs one hardware node won't be able to handle the stress.
There is no shared load balancing in a Windows 2000 Advanced Server cluster. The gentleman talking about the web server clustering is talking about a different solution, the Microsoft Application Server, which is Microsoft's software load balancer/web deployment system that makes a gob of web servers look like a cluster, as if you combined a good content management package with an Alteon LoadDirector or a Cisco content switch (whatever they're calling the Arrowpoint stuff these days). It's different software for a different purpose. The clustering stuff is for failover only.
If you're doing computationally intensive "stuff", and you want to load balance, Microsoft does not have a solution for that. The rep probably just knew you were doing something with "clustering" and that Microsoft sells "clustering", with no real knowledge of the fact that the clustering that Microsoft has is designed for something different than the clustering you need.
As far as "what would it take to get you to switch", I'd suggest that your answer should not overlook a statement like "Free licenses in perpetuity". Microsoft would probably be more than willing to hand you an eval, or even a few licenses for the current version, but the upgrade to
That's another point, if you want to use clustering, you have to buy "Enterprise Edition" products, like SQL Server EE, which costs 5 to 10 times the amount of SQL Server standard edition.
good luck,
rocketscientist.
My whole problem with this incident has been RMS's apparent willingness to admonish in public. It's not like Miguel is particularly difficult to get ahold of. It's not like he's not a regular on at least a few public email lists.
If RMS wants to take the "Free Software Leader" approach, it would have been much better received if he'd gone to Miguel in private and asked "WTF?" instead of doing it in a public forum. Then there could have been mutual understanding and (possibly) a joint clarification on what's going on.
--rocketscientist.
I'm sure MS would sell you one with a C# compiler though.
ba-dum-bum
NAB filed briefs with the FCC attempting to block frequency allocations for both XM and Sirius, citing the same complaints they have whenever someone tries to break their cartel, typically intereference with existing services. It looks like these guys are on our side, not on NAB's side. I agree, NAB sucks ass, and they are a cartel, in some ways worse than OPEC because they fall under US jurisdiction and they still exist. This is another way to beat them,
not join them.
So, where are you getting the content for that Nomad?
Where was that again? Oh, you're either buying cd's and ripping them, or you're downloading them with Morpheus.
How much was that cable modem?
You say above that the content on your nomad is free. Don't forget you've also got to procure and download songs to it. That will probably take you more than a couple hours a month if you want a wide selection of current content.
How much is your time worth?
OK, now how much would it cost to legally procure and use that content?
Your analysis was great up until you got to that part.
I've got channel number, channel name, artist, and song title for almost all of the stations on my XM radio receiver. The only problem is that the screen's a bit too small. It is digitally broadcast.
-rs
Umm...huh.
Some of the stations do have commercials. The comedy stations, probably due to more expensive content. The CNN/WeatherChannel/ESPN Radio talk channels, probably due to the fact that they're just getting feeds from other commercial services. However, I'd rather listen to ESPN Radio, commercials and all, than listen to something that doesn't have the coverage and commentary that ESPN does. I doubt that either XM or Sirius would be able to put together a high-quality sports show, for example. The XM Radio news stuff is mostly just read off-the-wire, so it's not so great either. I just wish they had more NPR-ish news.
The music channels are generally commercial free. Some have commercials (on the order of a minute or two an hour maybe). Many do not (the decade stations are, I believe, commercial free). Some content with advertising, some without. I remember hearing that their alternative-ish station was doing an hourlong commercial-free concert last night.
There's a mix of both. If you have the service, and you don't want the commercials, you can either avoid the stations with commercials or (gasp) change stations. There's a hundred of them, chances are you'll find at least 5 or 10 that are acceptable to your tastes.
Mine's worked fine in rain. Haven't had heavy rain or snow yet though. I'm more worried about the antenna icing over than what happens in the clouds, I think there's probably more attenuation possibilities with antenna obstruction than with attenuation from clouds.
Keep in mind you're dealing with a more powerful signal than a satellite tv signal because they use less bandwidth (they can put out the same amount of power into a smaller amount of spectrum). They're also using newer sats, which (I would assume, probably incorrectly) have better power generation.
-rs
I have an hour commute every day. Combined with the occasional roadtrip, and I like having XM. When you add in the total suckiness of radio here in Kansas City, where we have one "All Pink Floyd, All The Time" station, one "Classic Rock" station and a whole crapload of Britney stations, some "Easy Listening" stations. No alternative. Not even any modern rock. They all suck.
I've got the pioneer equipment. It works well, it doesn't cut out, it sounds great. There are lots of stations with lots of different kinds of music.
I got it installed right before an 18 hour road trip. There's nothing like having music piped in for 9 hours at a stretch with no commercials and not having to change stations because "Another Brick in the Wall" came on AGAIN.
(Pink Floyd put out 20+ albums, why do radio stations insist on playing The Wall over and over and over again?)
The installation is painless, very similar to installing a remote CD Changer in your car.
Things I wish they had: Some kind of smart-card-ish way to bring a receiver into my house that doesn't cost as much as Sony's solution.
I'm very happy with the system right now.
-rs
The SD cards are significantly smaller than the CF cards. One would assume that being newer technology they also consume less power.
You're not a lawyer, fortunately for MS they have a bunch of lawyers who write their EULA's. They specifically bar anyone who clicks their license from suing them because their software sucks ass (I think that's even a direct quote).
I think you're the one with the wheelbarrow full of excrement.
The NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 change was fairly dramatic. Nearly all of the control panel options disappeared, replaced with the ever-crappy, crashing pile of MMC. User Manager and Server Manager, gone. Complete retraining for all the sysadmins who have to use these tools daily and aren't sharp enough to pick it up on their own. Active Directory was introduced in Win2K, a large change for large organizations, where even incremental changes are extremely expensive.
The problem is that you don't remember how painful the Win2K upgrade was because it happened two years ago. When your company does the upgrade, go hang out with the user support folks for a couple days. Feel their pain. Take notes, and keep them. Otherwise you'll forget how much the XP upgrade sucks in a couple years, when, uh, Windows YP is introduced, or Windows XQ, or whatever they're going to call the next one, the one with build number 6.X.
rocketscientist.
When they launched service in Kansas City, which is Sprint's hometown, there were very very few (like double-digit) folks who could get service. It was basically resold-DSL, and it had to be the highest rate DSL that the local telco could sell, so you basically have to live next door to the switching office. Plus, they were selling local and long distance service in addition to high speed net access, so it wasn't exactly in the best interest of Southwestern Bell to make sure that they could sell the service. SWB, which isn't exactly jumping through hoops to get DSL online either, is quickly being eclipsed by the cable modem service here in Kansas City, which is actually very good.
The biggest suck factor to the service was the marketing. It's been "coming soon" here in KC for at least 4 years. It'll be "available any day now". Crap. It wasn't just ION, it was actual vapor. They had sales people at every Sprint PCS store here, and they couldn't answer any questions about anything. My favorite, though, was the FAQ list posted at their site, which didn't answer the number one question: When are you going to take my money and give me service?
Oh, well. That whole Darwin thing. Sprint couldn't deliver anything, so TimeWarner and ComCast came in and started dominating the market. I kept hearing from folks that worked on ION that they'd be launching a wireless no-SWB service, but it never materialized, just like anything else with ION.
I wonder if you couldn't do a cellular-handoff type thing, with the router closest to the client automatically handling as much traffic as it can, and have other towers within range pick up the folks they can in the event of an overload.
Of course, the cell companies don't even get this right all the time (lots of dropped calls are a result of this not happening correctly).
This uses a 5 Ghz piece of spectrum. The antennas can be smaller or have more gain for their size, which would enhance range. This would be great as a point-to-point link with highly directional, high gain antennas (like a 12 element yagi or something).
Great idea for a denial of service attack. All I've got to do is write a client to attach to a server millions of times using different keys.
Why wouldn't it work?
On storage....
There are various hydrides that can "store" hydrogen as a compound in a solid state and make it easy to re-extract the hydrogen as needed.
Yeah, I have a great idea. Let's all surf over to Windows Update from our web servers.
Sorry, all of my servers are blocked for outbound HTTP. Can't surf from them. Why? To prevent people (or a worm) from installing unauthorized patches from outside our network. I mean, if you're going to allow surfing, why don't you just pull up Outlook and check your email while you're at it?
I agree, however, that I don't get Gartner's points either, but for a different reason. Attention managers: If you hire bad Sys Admin folks, you're going ot have problems. It doesn't matter if it's a Windows shop or a UNIX shop or whatever. Good admins take care of things, bad admins don't. Pretty cut and dried. This isn't a Windows problem directly, it's an admin problem.
The point is that it will help protect MY network. If it has a happy side-effect of keeping any other network from being infected for a little bit, that's just gravy.
We had so many infected machines inside our corporate LAN that we had a carrier-class switch go down from excessive ARP traffic for invalid IP addresses. Our corporate firewall couldn't keep up with the outbound connection attempts, we had to disconnect it from the inside network.
If we'd had this running INSIDE our network, I think we would have been reasonably OK, or at least less screwed.
Yeah, the next virus might be better, multi-threaded, whatever. But it'll have to spawn a thread for every connection that I grab. That's going to (hopefully) use up resources on the attacking machine faster than it uses up my resources. And really, that's the goal, to turn the DOS attack back onto the attacker. If this is even 25% effective at doing that, then it pays for the minimal hardware I'm going to need to put this in place.
And where, exactly, did I say we needed to declare war on anyone? I said we need to take people out, as in reduce their current and effetiveness to cause us problems to nil. I didn't say we needed to declare war on anything or anyone. For all I know, this could be a bunch of wackos in Montana, I'm not all that in favor of causing permanent damage to Montana either.
I don't recall a declaration of war during the American Revolutionary war, specifically because there weren't two soverign parties involved, at least from the British standpoint. (Having a declaration of war would have implied that America was sovereign, actually.)
While you can't have a war without two soverign nations, it is possible to negotiate a peace between two parties, and it is possible to have two parties that are having hostilities with each other without a declared war.
Korea, Vietnam, Libya, hell, even Iraq are all examples. We can find these terrorists. We will find these terrorists. I just hope they don't go quietly, because as much as I fear terrorists, I fear the ridiculous excuse of a justice system we have that allows other terrorists who killed Americans to be tried in the Netherlands, where they can't be FRIED.
Read, then comment next time. First READ, then comment.
schmuck.
If you haven't checked it out, poliglut is also kicking a lot of ass with their coverage.
Highly recommended.
Yes, we need "Peace in Our Time".
Who said that?
Neville Chamberlain. After meeting with Adolf.
schmuck.
For the record: Negotiating with terrorists DOES NOT WORK. It's like negotiating with a hydra: Set peace with one, and the others will still attack. You're making the broad and stupid assumption that there is such a thing as a "terrorist organization" with rules that all of the terrorists follow. It doesn't work that way. The "Real IRA" popped up after the negotiated peace in Northern Ireland, and all of the Palestinian terrorist organizations that used to follow Arafat don't anymore, because they just want to kill bad guys, not solve the original problem.
Germany and Japan don't seem to have attacked anyone since we settled that dispute back in the 1940's. I don't see a Spanish Armada any more. The British are still gone from the United States after the little hullaboo in the 1770's. History seems to bear out several cases where taking violence to the opposing force keeps them from attacking again. It also bears out that if you leave the opposition with enough strength that you'll continue to have problems after a lamely negotiated peace agreement: Iraq, Germany post World War 1, the Real IRA, Hamas.
I'm not finding a lot of historical precedent that bodes well for the safety of the US if we don't track these folks down and wipe them out.
And solar satellites would happen precisely...never. We'd have thousands of environmentalist wackos telling us that it's going to give kids cancer, fry some stupid-ass backward-flying striped wallaby or something, and it causes global warming somehow.
I know that's all crap, you know that's all crap. Try and explain it to greenpeace.
Then there's the fact that the scaremongers are trying to predict global climate changes for a 4 billion year old planet with 200 years of directly observed global data and about 5,000 years of inferred circumstantial and highly suspect data.
If you're really concerned about global warming and greenhouse gases, go plug up a volcano with your ass.
The bandwidth is yet another example of why it's not always a terrible thing to live in the land of the huge SUV and several industries related to raising, slaughtering, butchering, refrigerating, transporting, selling, and cooking cows.
We do a lot of things to excess in the states. Not all of that's bad.