Otherwise? The packages in general. It takes something so long to make it through the repo approval system that it's obsolete by the time it hits mainline. For some that is probably a bonus, but for me that's just a pain in the arse, cuz then I have to go and find either a repo that bolts on or a deb and the appropriate dependencies. For those that argue that AptoSid, or unstable/testing etc are the answer... well my forays into AptoSid and unstable/testing were less stable than Gentoo/Sabayon... So, I tried each of the porridges and found Arch seems to be in the sweet spot. (Until RedHat/Fedora abandons RPM, I will not touch them... though I am forced to use RHCE at work, and yum at least seems reasonable these days even if the RHCE repo is archaic.)
Also, the.deb build process is more painful than it ought to be (unless I am missing something, which is likely as my patience is not infinite.) whereas it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out the PKGBUILD system so that I could roll my own packages for use when AUR didn't have what I needed/wanted.
One presumes that the "first" sale was allocated a specific amount of infrastructure based on estimates of performance when extrapolated out to the number of distributed copies, therefore that infrastructure is attached to the physical media. If the first owner sells the physical media then the "mineral rights" should also be transferred.
However, I have to say that the documentation is quite excellent (with some reservations {wireless is a bit messy}) and the forum and IRC support is very helpful. Which is inconsistent across the distros (Gentoo and Sabayon tend to either be really helpful or real hardcore jerks). The Arch guys are always cordial and helpful which encouraged me to hang out there more often...
Pacman is slick and fast. The query feature could be more robust before it reaches Debian loveliness, but that isn't always necessary. Sabayon's entropy is nice and verbose, but slow does not begin to describe it. Sulfur is even worse.
AUR is cool, but I definitely recommend a manager for it as it can be tedious fetching all of the prereqs for a much loved piece of software.
There are many Arch-based or inspired distros. I currently use ArchBang, which keeps you from having to start which the bash shell and work upward from there. I've done the build from bare metal with Gentoo and Arch enough to know that I don't always want to start there.
The Army still employs the Red Team, Blue Team model as well. There is a Warrant Officer billet for it. The few that I have met weren't terribly competent though. They were the one's who were persistent enough to hang around and get into the "cool" program. (Although my sample size is slightly more than a handful of reservists.)
I thought it was a good way to weed out the weak-willed. I had a blast in USMC boot camp. It was like Boy Scout Camp with M-16s and hilariously angry people.
I understand what you're saying... and to some extent I can agree. I grew up dirt-floor poor in rural Oklahoma. So I've been there. However, I owned the maintenance contracts on 32 single-family properties and 2 multi-family properties that were primarily populated by Section 8 families. These families did not pay full rate for any utilities, or the home... but they did for cable. I only worked in the houses on nights and weekends as my primary job pays the bills, this was an investment in my father's line of business. Every single one of those houses had their thermostat at 75deg or below (I keep mine at 80 when I am not home), most of them had massive plumbing issues due to grease being poured directly into the garbage disposal (we called them trap candles), and often the automatic dishwasher had to be serviced or replaced once a year because the dishes weren't scraped before the dishes are washed. They did tend to have large televisions, but they were probably purchased at deep discounts at the local closed up grocery store (there are no operational groceries in the area due to crime) parking lot from questionable origins.
There were very few exceptions to the 70+ units that we maintained to the above sort of maltreatment of the property. The people that did take of their homes were elderly or veterans.
So, both sides of the aisle have some truths to their argument. As a person who has to claim over 250,000 in income due to owning a small business but has far less than that amount in actual disposable cash flow. How am I supposed to feel when someone says that I am wealthy and that I should pay more to support these programs with obviously questionable results?
Yeah, same here. I had uberfast service via Uverse at my last home. Here, I moved between to small towns (40,000 and 3,000) there is 1/4 between the city limits, and I am halfway between on the main thoroughfare. There is fiber all over both towns due to some largish companies encouraging local ISPs and the muni's to pony up. There is a fiber line that runs through my front yard. However, I cannot get cable or DSL, so I opted for 3G... I snatched up a Virgin MiFi as soon as I noticed the rates, it sure beat Cricket Wireless. Now... I can either pony up for basically the same rates as Cricket... (except Cricket does have a 7.5GB cap available) or I can ditch my investment and try to solve the problem otherwise.
Bunch of arseholes they are... I would've been happy paying another 20-30 per month... which would be exorbitant for the speeds that I was getting, but it would allow wife/son to see Kipper on NetFlix streaming without killing our limit.
Sure. The dozens of websites and editorials (Daily Kos) that either wished death or assassination on Republicans should be considered responsible when a R gets an owie.
The guy had an antagonistic relationship toward religion, smoked a lot of pot, and burned the American flag. What political affiliation does that sound like to you?
I give you a clue... It's the leading party in Crazytown.... He's a f-in nutball. Who cares what he attached himself to? Crazy people kill each other over crushes on actresses, alien butt-probes, and artificial flavors.
This guy just happened to be more successful than most.
I have asked that a raise be adjusted such that it didn't kick me into the higher bracket. I have also turned down work as I didn't want to risk be kicked over into the next bracket...
In the second case, we delayed the project until Q1 of the following year.
The above were as sole proprietor or employee.
As an employer, the tax code is insane... Also as a LLC or S-Corp... tax code is asinine. Anything that lowers my taxes, also allows me to employ people to make sure that I'm compliant, so I don't go to FPMITAP.
However, there is a cost associated with their existence as well. By putting political pressure on an administration to never have a civilian casualty they hamstring the military. It is impossible to wage a war without civilian casualties. The progress that was made in Iraq was made when impossible rules of engagement were rolled back for strategic actions that were then followed by aggressive propaganda campaigns.
The above sort of action was blocked by UNISOM in the Somalia... and hence the horrible things that happened there... and the continuing problems and violence. To restructure a society, all parties need to see the restructuring as a positive motion in which they gain something of great value... sometimes the thing of greatest value is to stop us from rolling over them like a steamroller.
Not really. Filibusters are accepted practice.. and have been escalating since the middle of the century. You can't have it both ways... either it is an acceptable procedure or it is not. The Senate could vote to revoke the ability to filibuster by changing it's rules when it convenes.
Regarding Gitmo. Gitmo was up for consideration while the Dems had a super-majority in both Houses, so the lack of closure was implicit on the part of Congress and explicit on the part of POTUS.
We saw where that stood when the HealthCare bill passed.
Agreed. You should really research the comments. If you did you would find that equating MS to *nix is a false statement, though it gains more weight if you incorrectly categorize Macs as a *nix.
The reason that most of family has migrated away from Windows has to do with the XP to Vista/7 disease.
That would include BrotherA (2 PCs, 1 laptop, 1 Netbook), BrotherB (1 PC, 1 Netbook), Father (2PCs, 1 laptop), StepSis (1PC, 1Laptop), and WifeA (2Laptops).
They (the group above) often asked about the various things that I had going on on my machines, and I would explain how it works, and why Windows could not do it, but blah blah blah. Despite having AV/Malware detection installed and a local proxy service (BlueCoat K9) the machines would need to be scrubbed down and/or have crapware uninstalled semi-annually. So far, we at nearly a year, and no problem calls. The users above use the following functions of their PC's:
1. Wifi connectivity (out of the box) 2. Photo editing 3. Video editing 4. Internet usage including Flash games 5. Office applications (Word processing, spreadsheets, small databases) 6. Various small end CAD systems used in CodeWeavers (AutoDesk Lite if I remember correctly) 7. Cell Modem/AirCard connectivity 8. Media consumption (DVD, AVI, MP3 etc)
The one common usage that they don't do is PC Gaming for WoW, EverCrack or anything else...
The actual case was for sexual harassment. The accuser made the error of thinking that the fellatio article would be the strongest piece of evidence, rather than the coworker's repeated complaints about unwelcome touching and comments.
The attack on the article is ludicrous. If the guy who wrote the article is a creep, then he should probably be censured.
New flash. The above sell what people want to buy.
Starbucks proves that coffee can sell at a premium. McD's starts selling coffee.
If you don't buy it, they don't sell it. Good food is just as cheap as fast food. You just have to work harder to get it, because it doesn't sell as well. Deal.
There are lots of things that you can do to help kids not be so fat.
1. Go to the local Boys and Girls club. Spend some time trying to volunteer or helping with events. 2. Talk to your local swim club, wrestling club, runner's club, soccer club, t-ball club, pop warner league about their outreach. Spend time with them recruiting kids, doing expositions, or donate cash to sponsor low-income kids or teams. 3. Boys Scouts, Girls Scouts, Explorers etc are always looking for speakers, demonstrations, or leaders.
The problem (as I see it) is that a great many people spend a lot of time bitching about the status quo and saying choice things like "There oughta be a law." when it is far more effective for you to get off your ass. This also helps the overall fatty to not-so-fatty ratio.
An excellent example is Dynamic Source NATing based on the both the source and Dest. GUi's have alternated between screwing it up and making magic. In some cases, if you didn't know how to CLI you were led to believe that it was impossible.
When I mess with my WAP/router at home or coordinate with the network team at work, it seems like I'm stuck in 1995. We're still manually listing IP address/port combinations for our firewall rules. There's a certain simplicity to this when dealing with a single system, but there are firewalls everywhere these days.
Yes. That's by design, believe it or not the Internet still operates around rules that were in place in 1995. Sorry 'bout that. Unfortunately, the telepathic OS and Application sense UI hasn't been developed yet.
What's available for managing complex firewall arrangements?
Every player has one. I personally like the concept of CSM(Cisco) and Juniper(NSM) both of those tools will allow for consistent portions of the policy across several devices while allowing you to change the hierarchy when necessary for a section or rule to take precedence locally. The things that I think they have over CheckPoint Provider-1 (1) Common ports and protocols, nothing new to allow for NSM, or CSM (2)The configs can include things like SNMP servers and routes.
Caveat: CSM interface stinks. CSM4.0 is looking better, but who knows when that goes GA?
What's being developed?
Look into the above. Also take a look at Palo Alto, and Cisco NSM (for uber-large deployments)
Can I take a Visio diagram, run it through a script, and get a list of firewall rules?
No. If you did, it would suck. Anybody who said they were writing such a tool would get a guffaw from me. Icky, Icky.
What about a GUI that illustrates the current system configuration and then lets me drag and drop systems across firewalls, and have the individual firewall ports automatically configured?
It would almost certainly be broken. Currently there are plenty o ways to administer your devices using objects. You can also create Objects that have multiple attributes such that you can drop an object into another object (a group) and then republish the ruleset and get the access that you desire. However, using this sort of shorthand is the kind of stuff that can get you to fail a pen test. However, if you balance it right you can get a lot of work done by a few FW admins, and still maintain a relatively high level of security. (For examples on how a template system for server types and drag and drop would be broken, please refer to just about any firewall and DNS enforcement in a Windows environment.) Also, most FW management platforms have GUI that illustrate the network as the management platform sees it. First thing that a competent FW admin does is turn the thing off for two reasons, 1. The diagram is wrong. 2. It sucks up resources on the manager and on the client (My workstation)
What about tying a firewall into an authentication system so that when jdoe logs in, only then are the firewalls opened to pass her traffic?
Cisco, and Checkpoint do this with AAA rules. The cascade through multiple firewalls is stupid because if you're dealing with something that secure that you have to go through multiple layers then hopefully you're using multiple auth factors, one of which should be time limited (SecurID). You won't be able to re-use the authorization token. Palo Alto does this but requires that you depend on an AD polling service and that you have your auth groups set up in AD properly, and know one has jacked with them. Icky.
What about managing distributed firewalls so that one repository of rules opens up your system's firewalls, the DMZ firewall, and the public firewall all at once?
Seriously? Multitasking security configuration? Umm. this is where the "MBA" moment really shines through in you post. Each config needs to be combed for optimization, conflicts, and general nonsense. You have to do this in an iterative and detail-oriented manner, or you suck.
Your public school option does not address the problem that you posit either.
Parents, are, and should be the defining influence in a child's development. To propose anything else is to lessen freedom and diversity in our system, which is a loss.
If a child is home-schooled and can meet or exceed all of the academic standards that are required within a state, then you cannot argue against home-schooling unless you argue for state control. Arguing for state control of people's thought and development process is not a new argument for the American Liberal (i.e. PC Speech, aka ThoughtCrime) so I could accept that in your position.
However, if your standards are sufficiently high and require a diverse enough level of education then a child who could pass those exams should be able to review the given literature (The Bible vs various scientifically derived texts) and come to their own conclusions. Early in their life they may be swayed by their environment, but they will make a decision as to which is philosophically more acceptable at many points in their life.
By arguing against home education you make your argument appear weak. I disagree with your view because I was raised in a very religious region of the US by somewhat religious parents, but I developed doubts about the Bible at ~12 yrs old. (This caused my expulsion from a Bible study class when I quoted several contradictory verses to a position the teacher had proposed.)
My wife has taken all of the courses required to get her teaching cert for the sole reason that people like you may someday pass a law like California's attempt at banning home-schooling unless taught by a certified professional. May all people who propose such things find themselves infected with three different flavors of antibacterial resistant STD's.
I'm sure that many Federal judge appointees would like to parley with you about your opinion.
Perhaps you should rethink your statement.
On the face of it, this has been the most partisan move that we've seen in politics in a long time. It's to the point where Dems are refusing to listen to their own voters.
Also, in case you hadn't noticed, Dems had a super-majority in both Houses when this crapfest was thrown up. So the blockade consists of other Dems. This is still the case in the House.
Please refer to above posts pointing that the decline of of exemptions (5%) was less than the decline in requests (11%) resulting in a higher net ratio of declined to requested under Obama.
Also, if you do some real study of Chinese culture and history you will find that there were many disruptive and non-productive periods in their history. These periods would be analogous to the European Dark Ages. They have also regressed in tech and learning for extensive periods.
Interestingly, I find that they nicely parallel the development of other civilizations, each with their peaks and valleys lasting for some time. I also tend to think (despite loving the language) that their language and culture retaining such a great deal of historical detritus is artifact of their current tech and knowledge discrepancies. As the culture and money sharing move into a more modern mode, they will probably undergo several stark changes that will create efficiencies and also make them more compatible with Western culture... but that's a long term vision.
Sure... Of course tech did seem to help during the Opium Wars... both of which were lost by China.
China can be beaten in warfare... The Sino-Japanese conflict also demonstrated that fact.
China is not as homogeneous as some would have us believe, and they are one farmer's revolt away from dissolving into internal conflict, as they have many times during their millenia in existence. Even then, during those millenia the primary ruling influence flowed from a subculture or family or political power.
Their not a joke... but they aren't as mighty as many people seem to think that they are.
Slashdot Mirror
For starters? The init system.
Otherwise? The packages in general. It takes something so long to make it through the repo approval system that it's obsolete by the time it hits mainline. For some that is probably a bonus, but for me that's just a pain in the arse, cuz then I have to go and find either a repo that bolts on or a deb and the appropriate dependencies. For those that argue that AptoSid, or unstable/testing etc are the answer... well my forays into AptoSid and unstable/testing were less stable than Gentoo/Sabayon... So, I tried each of the porridges and found Arch seems to be in the sweet spot.
(Until RedHat/Fedora abandons RPM, I will not touch them... though I am forced to use RHCE at work, and yum at least seems reasonable these days even if the RHCE repo is archaic.)
Also, the .deb build process is more painful than it ought to be (unless I am missing something, which is likely as my patience is not infinite.) whereas it took me all of 10 minutes to figure out the PKGBUILD system so that I could roll my own packages for use when AUR didn't have what I needed/wanted.
One presumes that the "first" sale was allocated a specific amount of infrastructure based on estimates of performance when extrapolated out to the number of distributed copies, therefore that infrastructure is attached to the physical media. If the first owner sells the physical media then the "mineral rights" should also be transferred.
Yeah... I love Arch, and I hate it.
However, I have to say that the documentation is quite excellent (with some reservations {wireless is a bit messy}) and the forum and IRC support is very helpful. Which is inconsistent across the distros (Gentoo and Sabayon tend to either be really helpful or real hardcore jerks). The Arch guys are always cordial and helpful which encouraged me to hang out there more often...
Pacman is slick and fast. The query feature could be more robust before it reaches Debian loveliness, but that isn't always necessary. Sabayon's entropy is nice and verbose, but slow does not begin to describe it. Sulfur is even worse.
AUR is cool, but I definitely recommend a manager for it as it can be tedious fetching all of the prereqs for a much loved piece of software.
There are many Arch-based or inspired distros. I currently use ArchBang, which keeps you from having to start which the bash shell and work upward from there. I've done the build from bare metal with Gentoo and Arch enough to know that I don't always want to start there.
Anyhow... back on topic... Yay for Arch.
The Army still employs the Red Team, Blue Team model as well. There is a Warrant Officer billet for it. The few that I have met weren't terribly competent though. They were the one's who were persistent enough to hang around and get into the "cool" program. (Although my sample size is slightly more than a handful of reservists.)
I thought it was a good way to weed out the weak-willed. I had a blast in USMC boot camp. It was like Boy Scout Camp with M-16s and hilariously angry people.
AngryDeuce.
I understand what you're saying... and to some extent I can agree. I grew up dirt-floor poor in rural Oklahoma. So I've been there. However, I owned the maintenance contracts on 32 single-family properties and 2 multi-family properties that were primarily populated by Section 8 families. These families did not pay full rate for any utilities, or the home... but they did for cable. I only worked in the houses on nights and weekends as my primary job pays the bills, this was an investment in my father's line of business. Every single one of those houses had their thermostat at 75deg or below (I keep mine at 80 when I am not home), most of them had massive plumbing issues due to grease being poured directly into the garbage disposal (we called them trap candles), and often the automatic dishwasher had to be serviced or replaced once a year because the dishes weren't scraped before the dishes are washed. They did tend to have large televisions, but they were probably purchased at deep discounts at the local closed up grocery store (there are no operational groceries in the area due to crime) parking lot from questionable origins.
There were very few exceptions to the 70+ units that we maintained to the above sort of maltreatment of the property. The people that did take of their homes were elderly or veterans.
So, both sides of the aisle have some truths to their argument. As a person who has to claim over 250,000 in income due to owning a small business but has far less than that amount in actual disposable cash flow. How am I supposed to feel when someone says that I am wealthy and that I should pay more to support these programs with obviously questionable results?
Yeah, same here. I had uberfast service via Uverse at my last home. Here, I moved between to small towns (40,000 and 3,000) there is 1/4 between the city limits, and I am halfway between on the main thoroughfare. There is fiber all over both towns due to some largish companies encouraging local ISPs and the muni's to pony up. There is a fiber line that runs through my front yard. However, I cannot get cable or DSL, so I opted for 3G... I snatched up a Virgin MiFi as soon as I noticed the rates, it sure beat Cricket Wireless. Now... I can either pony up for basically the same rates as Cricket... (except Cricket does have a 7.5GB cap available) or I can ditch my investment and try to solve the problem otherwise.
Bunch of arseholes they are... I would've been happy paying another 20-30 per month... which would be exorbitant for the speeds that I was getting, but it would allow wife/son to see Kipper on NetFlix streaming without killing our limit.
Not happy.
Sure. The dozens of websites and editorials (Daily Kos) that either wished death or assassination on Republicans should be considered responsible when a R gets an owie.
The guy had an antagonistic relationship toward religion, smoked a lot of pot, and burned the American flag. What political affiliation does that sound like to you?
I give you a clue... It's the leading party in Crazytown.... He's a f-in nutball. Who cares what he attached himself to? Crazy people kill each other over crushes on actresses, alien butt-probes, and artificial flavors.
This guy just happened to be more successful than most.
As a CDIB card holder... the reservation may not seem like a reparation... until you put a casino on it.
I have asked that a raise be adjusted such that it didn't kick me into the higher bracket. I have also turned down work as I didn't want to risk be kicked over into the next bracket...
In the second case, we delayed the project until Q1 of the following year.
The above were as sole proprietor or employee.
As an employer, the tax code is insane... Also as a LLC or S-Corp... tax code is asinine. Anything that lowers my taxes, also allows me to employ people to make sure that I'm compliant, so I don't go to FPMITAP.
Troops were scheduled to leave Iraq by Dubya. They are leaving on Dubya's time table.
So... ummm, Hope about getting them troops out of Afghanistan?
However, there is a cost associated with their existence as well. By putting political pressure on an administration to never have a civilian casualty they hamstring the military. It is impossible to wage a war without civilian casualties. The progress that was made in Iraq was made when impossible rules of engagement were rolled back for strategic actions that were then followed by aggressive propaganda campaigns.
The above sort of action was blocked by UNISOM in the Somalia... and hence the horrible things that happened there... and the continuing problems and violence. To restructure a society, all parties need to see the restructuring as a positive motion in which they gain something of great value... sometimes the thing of greatest value is to stop us from rolling over them like a steamroller.
Remote administration by the Enterprise owner.
Not really. Filibusters are accepted practice.. and have been escalating since the middle of the century. You can't have it both ways... either it is an acceptable procedure or it is not. The Senate could vote to revoke the ability to filibuster by changing it's rules when it convenes.
Regarding Gitmo. Gitmo was up for consideration while the Dems had a super-majority in both Houses, so the lack of closure was implicit on the part of Congress and explicit on the part of POTUS.
We saw where that stood when the HealthCare bill passed.
Agreed. You should really research the comments. If you did you would find that equating MS to *nix is a false statement, though it gains more weight if you incorrectly categorize Macs as a *nix.
A well thought out response.
The reason that most of family has migrated away from Windows has to do with the XP to Vista/7 disease.
That would include BrotherA (2 PCs, 1 laptop, 1 Netbook), BrotherB (1 PC, 1 Netbook), Father (2PCs, 1 laptop), StepSis (1PC, 1Laptop), and WifeA (2Laptops).
They (the group above) often asked about the various things that I had going on on my machines, and I would explain how it works, and why Windows could not do it, but blah blah blah. Despite having AV/Malware detection installed and a local proxy service (BlueCoat K9) the machines would need to be scrubbed down and/or have crapware uninstalled semi-annually. So far, we at nearly a year, and no problem calls. The users above use the following functions of their PC's:
1. Wifi connectivity (out of the box)
2. Photo editing
3. Video editing
4. Internet usage including Flash games
5. Office applications (Word processing, spreadsheets, small databases)
6. Various small end CAD systems used in CodeWeavers (AutoDesk Lite if I remember correctly)
7. Cell Modem/AirCard connectivity
8. Media consumption (DVD, AVI, MP3 etc)
The one common usage that they don't do is PC Gaming for WoW, EverCrack or anything else...
The actual case was for sexual harassment. The accuser made the error of thinking that the fellatio article would be the strongest piece of evidence, rather than the coworker's repeated complaints about unwelcome touching and comments.
The attack on the article is ludicrous. If the guy who wrote the article is a creep, then he should probably be censured.
New flash. The above sell what people want to buy.
Starbucks proves that coffee can sell at a premium. McD's starts selling coffee.
If you don't buy it, they don't sell it. Good food is just as cheap as fast food. You just have to work harder to get it, because it doesn't sell as well. Deal.
There are lots of things that you can do to help kids not be so fat.
1. Go to the local Boys and Girls club. Spend some time trying to volunteer or helping with events.
2. Talk to your local swim club, wrestling club, runner's club, soccer club, t-ball club, pop warner league about their outreach. Spend time with them recruiting kids, doing expositions, or donate cash to sponsor low-income kids or teams.
3. Boys Scouts, Girls Scouts, Explorers etc are always looking for speakers, demonstrations, or leaders.
The problem (as I see it) is that a great many people spend a lot of time bitching about the status quo and saying choice things like "There oughta be a law." when it is far more effective for you to get off your ass. This also helps the overall fatty to not-so-fatty ratio.
An excellent example is Dynamic Source NATing based on the both the source and Dest. GUi's have alternated between screwing it up and making magic. In some cases, if you didn't know how to CLI you were led to believe that it was impossible.
When I mess with my WAP/router at home or coordinate with the network team at work, it seems like I'm stuck in 1995. We're still manually listing IP address/port combinations for our firewall rules. There's a certain simplicity to this when dealing with a single system, but there are firewalls everywhere these days.
Yes. That's by design, believe it or not the Internet still operates around rules that were in place in 1995. Sorry 'bout that. Unfortunately, the telepathic OS and Application sense UI hasn't been developed yet.
What's available for managing complex firewall arrangements?
Every player has one. I personally like the concept of CSM(Cisco) and Juniper(NSM) both of those tools will allow for consistent portions of the policy across several devices while allowing you to change the hierarchy when necessary for a section or rule to take precedence locally. The things that I think they have over CheckPoint Provider-1 (1) Common ports and protocols, nothing new to allow for NSM, or CSM (2)The configs can include things like SNMP servers and routes.
Caveat: CSM interface stinks. CSM4.0 is looking better, but who knows when that goes GA?
What's being developed?
Look into the above. Also take a look at Palo Alto, and Cisco NSM (for uber-large deployments)
Can I take a Visio diagram, run it through a script, and get a list of firewall rules?
No. If you did, it would suck. Anybody who said they were writing such a tool would get a guffaw from me. Icky, Icky.
What about a GUI that illustrates the current system configuration and then lets me drag and drop systems across firewalls, and have the individual firewall ports automatically configured?
It would almost certainly be broken. Currently there are plenty o ways to administer your devices using objects. You can also create Objects that have multiple attributes such that you can drop an object into another object (a group) and then republish the ruleset and get the access that you desire. However, using this sort of shorthand is the kind of stuff that can get you to fail a pen test. However, if you balance it right you can get a lot of work done by a few FW admins, and still maintain a relatively high level of security. (For examples on how a template system for server types and drag and drop would be broken, please refer to just about any firewall and DNS enforcement in a Windows environment.) Also, most FW management platforms have GUI that illustrate the network as the management platform sees it. First thing that a competent FW admin does is turn the thing off for two reasons, 1. The diagram is wrong. 2. It sucks up resources on the manager and on the client (My workstation)
What about tying a firewall into an authentication system so that when jdoe logs in, only then are the firewalls opened to pass her traffic?
Cisco, and Checkpoint do this with AAA rules. The cascade through multiple firewalls is stupid because if you're dealing with something that secure that you have to go through multiple layers then hopefully you're using multiple auth factors, one of which should be time limited (SecurID). You won't be able to re-use the authorization token. Palo Alto does this but requires that you depend on an AD polling service and that you have your auth groups set up in AD properly, and know one has jacked with them. Icky.
What about managing distributed firewalls so that one repository of rules opens up your system's firewalls, the DMZ firewall, and the public firewall all at once?
Seriously? Multitasking security configuration? Umm. this is where the "MBA" moment really shines through in you post. Each config needs to be combed for optimization, conflicts, and general nonsense. You have to do this in an iterative and detail-oriented manner, or you suck.
Your public school option does not address the problem that you posit either.
Parents, are, and should be the defining influence in a child's development. To propose anything else is to lessen freedom and diversity in our system, which is a loss.
If a child is home-schooled and can meet or exceed all of the academic standards that are required within a state, then you cannot argue against home-schooling unless you argue for state control. Arguing for state control of people's thought and development process is not a new argument for the American Liberal (i.e. PC Speech, aka ThoughtCrime) so I could accept that in your position.
However, if your standards are sufficiently high and require a diverse enough level of education then a child who could pass those exams should be able to review the given literature (The Bible vs various scientifically derived texts) and come to their own conclusions. Early in their life they may be swayed by their environment, but they will make a decision as to which is philosophically more acceptable at many points in their life.
By arguing against home education you make your argument appear weak. I disagree with your view because I was raised in a very religious region of the US by somewhat religious parents, but I developed doubts about the Bible at ~12 yrs old. (This caused my expulsion from a Bible study class when I quoted several contradictory verses to a position the teacher had proposed.)
My wife has taken all of the courses required to get her teaching cert for the sole reason that people like you may someday pass a law like California's attempt at banning home-schooling unless taught by a certified professional. May all people who propose such things find themselves infected with three different flavors of antibacterial resistant STD's.
I'm sure that many Federal judge appointees would like to parley with you about your opinion.
Perhaps you should rethink your statement.
On the face of it, this has been the most partisan move that we've seen in politics in a long time. It's to the point where Dems are refusing to listen to their own voters.
Also, in case you hadn't noticed, Dems had a super-majority in both Houses when this crapfest was thrown up. So the blockade consists of other Dems. This is still the case in the House.
Please refer to above posts pointing that the decline of of exemptions (5%) was less than the decline in requests (11%) resulting in a higher net ratio of declined to requested under Obama.
Not that I give a crap.
Also, if you do some real study of Chinese culture and history you will find that there were many disruptive and non-productive periods in their history. These periods would be analogous to the European Dark Ages. They have also regressed in tech and learning for extensive periods.
Interestingly, I find that they nicely parallel the development of other civilizations, each with their peaks and valleys lasting for some time. I also tend to think (despite loving the language) that their language and culture retaining such a great deal of historical detritus is artifact of their current tech and knowledge discrepancies. As the culture and money sharing move into a more modern mode, they will probably undergo several stark changes that will create efficiencies and also make them more compatible with Western culture... but that's a long term vision.
Sure... Of course tech did seem to help during the Opium Wars... both of which were lost by China.
China can be beaten in warfare... The Sino-Japanese conflict also demonstrated that fact.
China is not as homogeneous as some would have us believe, and they are one farmer's revolt away from dissolving into internal conflict, as they have many times during their millenia in existence. Even then, during those millenia the primary ruling influence flowed from a subculture or family or political power.
Their not a joke... but they aren't as mighty as many people seem to think that they are.
Someday maybe... but not today.