Without meaning to sound pedantic or callous, it is simply bigotry to say, "you're left-handed, STFU and deal with it." Left-handed people DO, indeed, "live with it". That sort of attitude is the sort that feeds intolerance of the very worst kind. If 10% of the world's population were to suddenly disappear, it is statistically probable someone you cared an awfully lot about would be gone, too. In my opinion, your statement is ignorance and short-sighted.
In what way are you having to "cater to us" right now? Where have you been forced or even ASKED to "cater" to a left-handed person, specifically?
While I don't "force" myself to do everything the opposite of the "right-handed" way of doing things, this world IS setup for right-handed people. Any left-handed person who's ever used a knife or a pair of scissors knows this. We are, in essence, "forced" to use our off-hands for dexterous manipulations. This isn't conjecture. This is a plain unfortunate fact.
Yes, knives have a handedness to them. A great majority of kitchen knives, for example, are ground with an edge favouring the right hand. Pocket knives are notorious for having handedness applied to them simply by making their operation right-handed. True that there are some ambidextrous folders but they aren't the norm or are only so in the most general sense. If there were a company to suddenly spring into existence making knives exclusively for lefties, they'd have a customer for life. But, as others have said, we are a small minority and have to kowtow to the right-handed majority we live with.
How freakin' hard is it, though, to get companies, regular find-in-an-hardware-store companies, to run a batch of rulers and squares and tape measures in mirrored notation? If you aren't left-handed, you might not ever think that would be an issue...but it is.
On behalf of all the sysadmins out there that have to connect to their end-users' workstations remotely, across widely variable WAN links, and perform maintenance or troubleshooting....I would like to state my preference for the standard, plain vanilla, no animated effects Windows 2000-style desktop.
When your seniour exec is on the phone yammering about their issue and you have to remote in and SEE what the heck they are talking about, it makes our job DRAMATICALLY simpler if all those pretty little gewgaws are turned off. Additionally, it tends to make the end-users' experience better based on the simple performance boost of less drag on the display.
Looking pretty is fine and has its place, I'll agree, but on a business workstation: rounded windows, pretty jellybean buttons, varying opacities, and animated effect only serve as a distraction to productivity.
I have used MRTG, CACTI, and PRTG in production use for a little more than 500 unique devices. I started piloting OpenNMS but never got too deep into it before I moved on so I cannot comment on its usefulness. I CAN, however, say that PRTG (especially in the new v7) is the whole shebang for us.
There used to be a PRTG product and an IPCheck product from Paessler but -now- the PRTG product has pretty-much everything in one convenient package. You can monitor routers and switches (that Cacti was so very, very good at doing) but it also can monitor servers, printers, and other hardware. Anything you can expose an OID for, you can check it with PRTG. We have the NetFlow version, as well, so I capture all the NetFlow streams from our boundary routers and core routing switches. All of the critical Windows/Linux boxes in-house are also a breeze to setup and monitor.
For the price, the product is really a great deal. The commercial support is good, too, not to mention the large volume of customer/vendor forums on their website. I highly recommend it, esp. considering the short deployment time it required.
Regardless of whether this was meant seriously or not...
In 10 or 15 years, the need to physically PLUG your computing device into something will, likely, be obsolete. Wireless will be matured to the point wherein our ever-more-mobile society will be completely unplugged. Maybe large carriers will still continue with physical media connections between devices but end-users will be free from such restraint.
I have executive end-users who do a considerable amount of work from their homes via VPN. My boss has a hardware VPN link running 24/7 with servers hanging off it. This generates quite a bit of transfer that will easily break the cap.
Things like this are the death knell of work-from-home. The providers assume that all their customers' Internet usage is "casual" and "discretionary". In fact, some of their customers are working to keep their jobs as more and more corporations downsize and reduce costs by letting people telecommute.
"Sorry Mr. Bossman. I can't work today because my ISP capped my transfers."
I'll agree that these newer OS's from Microsoft have gotten prettier but they have they increased productivity?
For me, from a management perspective, all of this wonderful "upgrade" in eye candy for the end-user has only increased the amount of time it takes for me to troubleshoot a problem. Here I am attempting to remotely control someone's workstation half a world away and it looks like a slideshow because of all the wonderful gewgaws prettying up the screen.
Seriously, our end-users are here to perform a job. This job has a fairly limited scope of tasks within. No amount of beautification of the UI is going to help them accomplish these tasks. In my opinion, they only serve to confound, confuse, and constrict our ability to just "get the job done". Oh, I am well aware of how to turn off most of these "enhancements" but the underlying code that runs the desktop experience is still much slower to redraw my screen all the way back here to my desk.
I would have much preferred Microsoft add honest-to-goodness functionality to their new OS's rather than concentrating so much on their window dressing.
I had hundreds of BE6's (and their impressive array of variants) in workstations and servers. The great majority of them died with nasty leaky and explosive capacitors. Abit cheaped out by getting their cut-rate caps from a questionable supplier and *I* was the one who had to pay the price...never bought another Abit mobo again.
Orlando, Florida has the most foul and putrid water I have ever had the displeasure of drinking. [...] I feel bad for anyone living in Orlando.
I appreciate that. It also helps to understand that Florida's primary water source is its natural aquifer system. The properties of our soil, sand, and limestone foundation means the water coming out of our taps is, of its very nature, very "hard" with minerals. It is just a fact of life down here.
The scariest game I've ever played...Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. The Shalebridge Cradle was unbelievable. If you haven't played the game, I would highly recommend it.
Well, I think that as soon as they announce that we will start new drilling out there in previously 'banned' areas...that speculators in oil will begin selling off...and that should drop the prices almost overnight back to more normal levels. I politely disagree. In the past number of months, no industry news that the average layperson, much less an industry insider, would consider positive to the reduction of prices has been heeded by traders in the energy futures market.
One thing I hear over and over again in the media is "worries over supply concerns". OK, seriously folks...since WHEN has the Middle East (or Nigeria for that matter) been a hotbed of stability and peace? It is a simple matter of fact that supply has _not_ been reduced to any amount that would justify the current trading price of crude oil.
The way I read it, supply remains pretty constant and demand has begun to slope off dramatically. This should equate to a corresponding market drop in futures trading for crude oil. It hasn't. Saudi Arabia commits to increased production and this should, also, equate to a drop in futures pricing. It hasn't. There is, in my opinion, no sanity in the energy futures market for crude oil...just a bunch of really FSCKING hyper-greedy speculators sucking the blood of the American common man and no-one doing anything substantive about it.
When indoctrinated into military service, you are told, very explicitly, that you have an obligation to refuse knowingly unlawful orders. You are also made well aware that your actions, regardless of the lawfulness of the order, are fully punishable by a court martial. Do we hold the "telcos" to a lower standard?
True enough that we should prosecute an investigation against those GIVING the order in the first place but we should also do the same for those blithely accepting such unlawful direction.
I've got a pretty good idea...before you enter public office in Washington, you should spend a week working in a Waffle House.
You will meet people from every walk of life in a Waffle House, and hear their stories. Having the Honourable Senator Oblivious bussing tables, taking orders, and burning toast in a Waffle House might just give them a taste of what it is like to live like the average American citizen.
I called, wrote, and emailed my Senators and my Representative about this when the previous FISA bill came up in February.
This new bill somehow managed to fly under the radar for a long time. Has anyone taken note of how this "suddenly" started getting reported on only as it is coming to the floor of the House? WTF?? The last go-round, there was a LOT of coverage of the bill for quite some time. This one, however, just springs up out of nowhere and passes like greased lightning. I smell a rat...*err* politician.
No sooner did I hear about the new FISA bill than I started canvassing my elected representatives again. I've attempted to make my voice heard in the House to no avail. My Representative (a Republican) can in no wise count on my support the next election cycle. Democrat, Republican, Anarchist...I don't care WHO challenges her for that seat, I'm voting for THEM. When my voice, my CHOSEN and ELECTED official, in Washington refuses to give my opinion a fair shake on things, I opt for very public and immediate change in personnel.
Now, we get to see what the Senate has to say. Should my elected voices in that wing of Congress fail to listen to their constituency, I'll mark them for humiliating defeat come next election day too. I am sick and fracking tired of living in a country where professional politicians in Washington sit on their oblivious asses and make policy that shovels me a little deeper into the muck....I swear, what a bunch of assclowns.
It's amazing what a little fear of losing their cushy job can make a recalcitrant politician do. There was _some_ point in our past where "Democrat" and "Republican" actually meant something. In today's American political scene, I would offer my personal analysis: The terms "Democrat" and "Republican" may be used interchangeably as both are champions of change and responsibility when they are a) in ascendancy and/or b) the underdog.
This whole Democrat == BIG government and Republican == SMALL government is so much hogswallop. The only place where there is an actual honest foundational difference in political party is in its constituents (that's you and me, folks). The "distinguished fellows" up on the Hill are just using those banners and slogans for personal gain in power/position. It is so much spin and feel-good nonsense doled out in carefully measured portions for the average person to _feel_ something.
Add to this mishmash of incredulity the personal observations I've seen of Republicans saying very "Democrat" things and vice versa. It is a mindgame being played on us.
I am a registered Republican...I have some idealized notions of government which put me in that political party. I've seen and heard nothing lately that impresses upon me that my chosen political party is _doing_ anything very "Republican" lately. I'll tell you, Bush has completely fucked ANY Republican candidate hoping to run for the office of President...good luck Senator McCain, you have a steep road to climb. How even more fucked up is it that the Democratic candidates are bitchslapping one another right now, making what should be a total cakewalk into the White House an entirely questionable affair?
OK, my diatribe about politics is over. Hooray for the House, Democratic or Republican, for crafting a bill and passing it that actually has the average American citizen's best interests in mind. Who'd've thunk it? I seethe that I voted for that sonuvabitch who thinks he can bully through such an obvious attempt to CYA for what will surely eventually be revealed as gross misappropriations of our privacy and civil liberties at the hands of the Telco's on behalf of "protecting America". I call bullshit!!
...this just in...the House has passed their bill, sans immunity, and it looks like the Senate will pass it along to the President. Bush has promised a veto.
Quoting the AP article:
The government does have the power to compel telecommunications companies to cooperate with wiretaps if it gets warrants from a secret court. The government apparently did not get such warrants before initiating the post-9/11 wiretaps, which are the basis for the lawsuits. So...legally...the government ALREADY has the tools to conduct their surveillance. Imagine THAT!!
I quote again, from the article:
"We cannot conduct foreign surveillance without them. But if we continue to subject them to billion-dollar lawsuits, we risk losing their cooperation in the future," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. The operative words being "in the future". But, as previously stated, the government already HAS the power to compel the Telco's cooperation. So, I wonder again aloud, WHAT is our Executive administration up to? Why are they so keen to protect the Telco's? If I were to venture a guess I would say, "more of the same stuff the FBI just got caught doing."
I agree when you allude that the FBI, et al, want unfettered access...from a law enforcement perspective, they always have. But, since we don't (yet) live in a police state, we have checks and balances against that sort of thing.
If I recall correctly, FISA itself is sunsetting...Bush just fucking INSISTS on padding the new bill with this ridiculous Telco amendment. Any current modifications to FISA are included in the Patriot Act, which is itself a whole topic of discussion. In an interview with a high-ranking member of the intelligence community (obviously not a supporter of the Bush agenda) said essentially what you were saying...that the existing, unmodified, FISA rules were more than sufficient to provide access to domestic information and did not, in any way, legally compromise businesses complying with lawful requests.
I am, for lack of a better explanation, pissed OFF to think how President Bush is trying to fuck private American citizens for the sake of some corporate fellows who've stuffed some cash (and likely a few "Kristens") in his pocket. Make the Telco's immune from litigation retroactively and we will see a whole new assraping of our privacy and civil liberty.
I don't know why the FBI even bothers to try to hide its wrongdoing If the Senate (and the President) have their way, this new FISA bill that provides RETROACTIVE immunity to the Telco's from prosecution will obviate any need for secrecy. I applaud the House for _their_ version, which renews most of the FISA provisions yet leaves out this Telco immunity nonsense.
As I have read, heard, and understand, the current FISA (and general litigation) provisions already protect businesses from legal action so long as they were complying with lawful requests for information by government agencies. The current Executive administration is just trying to squeak out after getting its hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar.
If they are genuine samurai swords, they can't be exported That is incorrect. Nihonto, swords MADE in Japan can be exported following specific procedures as outlined HERE. It is more difficult, I've found, to IMPORT a sword into Japan. This is especially true if you are importing Nihonto.
The "practically worthless" swords, from a Japanese perspective, would be anything NOT made in Japan. Most of the cheap wallhangers that you see out there in the marketplace are from China, believe it or not.
Long gone are the days when an ISP/web hosting company standardized on DS3 or OC3/12/48 connections for their uplinks. I'd like to know wherein you base this statement. Do you work in the industry? I can tell you from a number of years of experience that Telco's, even for large-capacity links, still very routinely sell NxDS-1 and NxDS-3 and OCxxx to their subscribers. ISP's and Web hosting company's purchase their Internet connectivity from these selfsame Telco's. Price being a consideration, only the most well-equipped ISP or hosting company is going to be able to afford even the NxDS3 and OCxxx connectivity.
I will certainly agree with you that the best-advertised gear from the top names in network gear are well invested with 10GB options. It is only natural that the big chassis-based routing switches _come_ with 10GB links considering their bread-and-butter market of large network Ethernet.
I still stand by my assertion that Ethernet is _not_ a solution for reliable long-distance data circuits.
It's not a question of your end points needing that kind of bandwidth, it's a question of the links between ISPs and such. I, for one, am in no wise confident in ISP's and major backbone carriers using (of ALL things) ETHERNET to transfer data between one another. Ethernet was never intended nor designed to function as a safe, fault-tolerant, platform for Wide Area Networks. It is probably the most inefficient way of utilizing expensive long-distance hauls of any medium. For local area networks, which are by their very nature bursty and tolerant of retransmission, Ethernet in all of its forms is perfectly acceptable. Ethernet LAN's are cheap to build and easy to maintain. In the WAN, equipment and reliability become a much more expensive and tenuous affair.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed?
Without meaning to sound pedantic or callous, it is simply bigotry to say, "you're left-handed, STFU and deal with it." Left-handed people DO, indeed, "live with it". That sort of attitude is the sort that feeds intolerance of the very worst kind. If 10% of the world's population were to suddenly disappear, it is statistically probable someone you cared an awfully lot about would be gone, too. In my opinion, your statement is ignorance and short-sighted.
In what way are you having to "cater to us" right now? Where have you been forced or even ASKED to "cater" to a left-handed person, specifically?
While I don't "force" myself to do everything the opposite of the "right-handed" way of doing things, this world IS setup for right-handed people. Any left-handed person who's ever used a knife or a pair of scissors knows this. We are, in essence, "forced" to use our off-hands for dexterous manipulations. This isn't conjecture. This is a plain unfortunate fact.
Yes, knives have a handedness to them. A great majority of kitchen knives, for example, are ground with an edge favouring the right hand. Pocket knives are notorious for having handedness applied to them simply by making their operation right-handed. True that there are some ambidextrous folders but they aren't the norm or are only so in the most general sense. If there were a company to suddenly spring into existence making knives exclusively for lefties, they'd have a customer for life. But, as others have said, we are a small minority and have to kowtow to the right-handed majority we live with.
How freakin' hard is it, though, to get companies, regular find-in-an-hardware-store companies, to run a batch of rulers and squares and tape measures in mirrored notation? If you aren't left-handed, you might not ever think that would be an issue...but it is.
On behalf of all the sysadmins out there that have to connect to their end-users' workstations remotely, across widely variable WAN links, and perform maintenance or troubleshooting....I would like to state my preference for the standard, plain vanilla, no animated effects Windows 2000-style desktop.
When your seniour exec is on the phone yammering about their issue and you have to remote in and SEE what the heck they are talking about, it makes our job DRAMATICALLY simpler if all those pretty little gewgaws are turned off. Additionally, it tends to make the end-users' experience better based on the simple performance boost of less drag on the display.
Looking pretty is fine and has its place, I'll agree, but on a business workstation: rounded windows, pretty jellybean buttons, varying opacities, and animated effect only serve as a distraction to productivity.
I have used MRTG, CACTI, and PRTG in production use for a little more than 500 unique devices. I started piloting OpenNMS but never got too deep into it before I moved on so I cannot comment on its usefulness. I CAN, however, say that PRTG (especially in the new v7) is the whole shebang for us.
There used to be a PRTG product and an IPCheck product from Paessler but -now- the PRTG product has pretty-much everything in one convenient package. You can monitor routers and switches (that Cacti was so very, very good at doing) but it also can monitor servers, printers, and other hardware. Anything you can expose an OID for, you can check it with PRTG. We have the NetFlow version, as well, so I capture all the NetFlow streams from our boundary routers and core routing switches. All of the critical Windows/Linux boxes in-house are also a breeze to setup and monitor.
For the price, the product is really a great deal. The commercial support is good, too, not to mention the large volume of customer/vendor forums on their website. I highly recommend it, esp. considering the short deployment time it required.
Regardless of whether this was meant seriously or not...
In 10 or 15 years, the need to physically PLUG your computing device into something will, likely, be obsolete. Wireless will be matured to the point wherein our ever-more-mobile society will be completely unplugged. Maybe large carriers will still continue with physical media connections between devices but end-users will be free from such restraint.
I have executive end-users who do a considerable amount of work from their homes via VPN. My boss has a hardware VPN link running 24/7 with servers hanging off it. This generates quite a bit of transfer that will easily break the cap.
Things like this are the death knell of work-from-home. The providers assume that all their customers' Internet usage is "casual" and "discretionary". In fact, some of their customers are working to keep their jobs as more and more corporations downsize and reduce costs by letting people telecommute.
"Sorry Mr. Bossman. I can't work today because my ISP capped my transfers."
(*expletive deleted*)
I'll agree that these newer OS's from Microsoft have gotten prettier but they have they increased productivity?
For me, from a management perspective, all of this wonderful "upgrade" in eye candy for the end-user has only increased the amount of time it takes for me to troubleshoot a problem. Here I am attempting to remotely control someone's workstation half a world away and it looks like a slideshow because of all the wonderful gewgaws prettying up the screen.
Seriously, our end-users are here to perform a job. This job has a fairly limited scope of tasks within. No amount of beautification of the UI is going to help them accomplish these tasks. In my opinion, they only serve to confound, confuse, and constrict our ability to just "get the job done". Oh, I am well aware of how to turn off most of these "enhancements" but the underlying code that runs the desktop experience is still much slower to redraw my screen all the way back here to my desk.
I would have much preferred Microsoft add honest-to-goodness functionality to their new OS's rather than concentrating so much on their window dressing.
Good grief!!
I had hundreds of BE6's (and their impressive array of variants) in workstations and servers. The great majority of them died with nasty leaky and explosive capacitors. Abit cheaped out by getting their cut-rate caps from a questionable supplier and *I* was the one who had to pay the price...never bought another Abit mobo again.
I shan't miss them.
'Nuff said.
Orlando, Florida has the most foul and putrid water I have ever had the displeasure of drinking. [...] I feel bad for anyone living in Orlando.
I appreciate that. It also helps to understand that Florida's primary water source is its natural aquifer system. The properties of our soil, sand, and limestone foundation means the water coming out of our taps is, of its very nature, very "hard" with minerals. It is just a fact of life down here.
The scariest game I've ever played...Thief 3: Deadly Shadows. The Shalebridge Cradle was unbelievable. If you haven't played the game, I would highly recommend it.
...upon looking at what DenyHosts is...
Neat idea. Thanks!!
I'm gunning for the rights to "Caturday". I'm going to bankrupt those 4chan SOB's!!
One thing I hear over and over again in the media is "worries over supply concerns". OK, seriously folks...since WHEN has the Middle East (or Nigeria for that matter) been a hotbed of stability and peace? It is a simple matter of fact that supply has _not_ been reduced to any amount that would justify the current trading price of crude oil.
The way I read it, supply remains pretty constant and demand has begun to slope off dramatically. This should equate to a corresponding market drop in futures trading for crude oil. It hasn't. Saudi Arabia commits to increased production and this should, also, equate to a drop in futures pricing. It hasn't. There is, in my opinion, no sanity in the energy futures market for crude oil...just a bunch of really FSCKING hyper-greedy speculators sucking the blood of the American common man and no-one doing anything substantive about it.
When indoctrinated into military service, you are told, very explicitly, that you have an obligation to refuse knowingly unlawful orders. You are also made well aware that your actions, regardless of the lawfulness of the order, are fully punishable by a court martial. Do we hold the "telcos" to a lower standard?
True enough that we should prosecute an investigation against those GIVING the order in the first place but we should also do the same for those blithely accepting such unlawful direction.
I've got a pretty good idea...before you enter public office in Washington, you should spend a week working in a Waffle House.
You will meet people from every walk of life in a Waffle House, and hear their stories. Having the Honourable Senator Oblivious bussing tables, taking orders, and burning toast in a Waffle House might just give them a taste of what it is like to live like the average American citizen.
I called, wrote, and emailed my Senators and my Representative about this when the previous FISA bill came up in February.
This new bill somehow managed to fly under the radar for a long time. Has anyone taken note of how this "suddenly" started getting reported on only as it is coming to the floor of the House? WTF?? The last go-round, there was a LOT of coverage of the bill for quite some time. This one, however, just springs up out of nowhere and passes like greased lightning. I smell a rat...*err* politician.
No sooner did I hear about the new FISA bill than I started canvassing my elected representatives again. I've attempted to make my voice heard in the House to no avail. My Representative (a Republican) can in no wise count on my support the next election cycle. Democrat, Republican, Anarchist...I don't care WHO challenges her for that seat, I'm voting for THEM. When my voice, my CHOSEN and ELECTED official, in Washington refuses to give my opinion a fair shake on things, I opt for very public and immediate change in personnel.
Now, we get to see what the Senate has to say. Should my elected voices in that wing of Congress fail to listen to their constituency, I'll mark them for humiliating defeat come next election day too. I am sick and fracking tired of living in a country where professional politicians in Washington sit on their oblivious asses and make policy that shovels me a little deeper into the muck. ...I swear, what a bunch of assclowns.
So, do you (or anyone) have alternative recommendations for firewall appliances?
This whole Democrat == BIG government and Republican == SMALL government is so much hogswallop. The only place where there is an actual honest foundational difference in political party is in its constituents (that's you and me, folks). The "distinguished fellows" up on the Hill are just using those banners and slogans for personal gain in power/position. It is so much spin and feel-good nonsense doled out in carefully measured portions for the average person to _feel_ something.
Add to this mishmash of incredulity the personal observations I've seen of Republicans saying very "Democrat" things and vice versa. It is a mindgame being played on us.
I am a registered Republican...I have some idealized notions of government which put me in that political party. I've seen and heard nothing lately that impresses upon me that my chosen political party is _doing_ anything very "Republican" lately. I'll tell you, Bush has completely fucked ANY Republican candidate hoping to run for the office of President...good luck Senator McCain, you have a steep road to climb. How even more fucked up is it that the Democratic candidates are bitchslapping one another right now, making what should be a total cakewalk into the White House an entirely questionable affair?
OK, my diatribe about politics is over. Hooray for the House, Democratic or Republican, for crafting a bill and passing it that actually has the average American citizen's best interests in mind. Who'd've thunk it? I seethe that I voted for that sonuvabitch who thinks he can bully through such an obvious attempt to CYA for what will surely eventually be revealed as gross misappropriations of our privacy and civil liberties at the hands of the Telco's on behalf of "protecting America". I call bullshit!!
Quoting the AP article: The government does have the power to compel telecommunications companies to cooperate with wiretaps if it gets warrants from a secret court. The government apparently did not get such warrants before initiating the post-9/11 wiretaps, which are the basis for the lawsuits. So...legally...the government ALREADY has the tools to conduct their surveillance. Imagine THAT!!
I quote again, from the article: "We cannot conduct foreign surveillance without them. But if we continue to subject them to billion-dollar lawsuits, we risk losing their cooperation in the future," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. The operative words being "in the future". But, as previously stated, the government already HAS the power to compel the Telco's cooperation. So, I wonder again aloud, WHAT is our Executive administration up to? Why are they so keen to protect the Telco's? If I were to venture a guess I would say, "more of the same stuff the FBI just got caught doing."
I agree when you allude that the FBI, et al, want unfettered access...from a law enforcement perspective, they always have. But, since we don't (yet) live in a police state, we have checks and balances against that sort of thing.
If I recall correctly, FISA itself is sunsetting...Bush just fucking INSISTS on padding the new bill with this ridiculous Telco amendment. Any current modifications to FISA are included in the Patriot Act, which is itself a whole topic of discussion. In an interview with a high-ranking member of the intelligence community (obviously not a supporter of the Bush agenda) said essentially what you were saying...that the existing, unmodified, FISA rules were more than sufficient to provide access to domestic information and did not, in any way, legally compromise businesses complying with lawful requests.
I am, for lack of a better explanation, pissed OFF to think how President Bush is trying to fuck private American citizens for the sake of some corporate fellows who've stuffed some cash (and likely a few "Kristens") in his pocket. Make the Telco's immune from litigation retroactively and we will see a whole new assraping of our privacy and civil liberty.
All I can hear now is: ZOMBO.COM
As I have read, heard, and understand, the current FISA (and general litigation) provisions already protect businesses from legal action so long as they were complying with lawful requests for information by government agencies. The current Executive administration is just trying to squeak out after getting its hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar.
The "practically worthless" swords, from a Japanese perspective, would be anything NOT made in Japan. Most of the cheap wallhangers that you see out there in the marketplace are from China, believe it or not.
I will certainly agree with you that the best-advertised gear from the top names in network gear are well invested with 10GB options. It is only natural that the big chassis-based routing switches _come_ with 10GB links considering their bread-and-butter market of large network Ethernet.
I still stand by my assertion that Ethernet is _not_ a solution for reliable long-distance data circuits.