IMHO, you can't try to get any useable ROI figure for security features. Whatever security feature you add, it's supposed to handle an unlikely event. Should that event never happen, whatever money invested would prove totally worthless. However, _if_ you encounter an issue, then you'll be happy to have spent enough money into security.
AFAIK, you consider security the same way you consider insurance (or as an insurance complement): How much your business continuity's worth? Should you be hacked/DDoSed, how will it affect your revenue? How much money would you need to get it all back online? You'll also need to consider how intrusive your security is: data backup solutions sometimes require you to stop services while they are processed. If you want backups to be non-intrusive, again, you'll consider how much these stopped services cost. Same goes for services availability (clustering, replication, off-site disaster recovery plans).
In short : your security investments are business specific. No easy rule of thumb in here, I'm afraid.
There's no need for faster than Mach 2 planes, but rather for more cost effective ones. What prevented Concorde from beeing successful was that it was designed before oil prices went up in the early 70's.
If they end up making a supersonic plane that allows masses to get access to supersonic flights, _that_ will be impressive.
There's unfortunatly no 100% effective way a simple user could get rid of the queues at the ISP side during heavy downloads.
ICMP Source Quench were supposed to be an answer to this, but the potential exploits lead many admins to simply filter them out.
IMHO, 'gaming firewalls' could ease a bit latency on assymetric lines (ADSL mostly), but true QoS can only be achieved if _both_ ends do shape their traffic (the above applies to IPv4).
As far as I've seen by experimenting myself, the benefit of such an assymetric setup is to prevent excessive pings (several seconds). Playing a FPS during heavy use is still a no go as it implies irregular ping, and an average of 100-150 ms. However, it's quite a nice setup if you plan to play some MMORPG or want to get connected through SSH.
Even though I'm a cheese-eating-not-surrender-monkey (joking), I'll have to point out some things about the situation here:
It is true that having 75% or so of electric power coming from nuclear power has its advantages, but as others mentionned already, this is only one side of the overall issue here (car fuel? truck fuel?).
However, the use of nuclear plants is not the ultimate solution we all dream of. Cooling the reactor uses a lot of water taken from the rivers, thus warming them (heat pollution). The very same issue also means that during very hot periods of the year, nuclear plants needs to be throttled down or even stopped down to stay within safe operationnal boundaries. What's the power source then when you suddenly can't rely on nuclear plants? Moreover, our plants are getting old, and maintenance costs are getting higher. One might state that 'there has not been a major nuclear accident in France since the program began.', but what if these accidents are yet to come? We had pretty good maintenance as long as the company owning the plants was owned by the state, but now that it's a private company, what about the maintenance funding if the company needs to cut some budgets to stay competitive? (You've had some idea of the issues caused by private power companies in Calif. lately, don't you?) On a side note, nuclear fuel reprocessing is supposed to be handled properly here - the US even sent us some old nuclear warheads load to be converted to plant fuel, but the reprocessing facilities lack transparency in their operation. We know that it is a sensitive activity, but because of that, we can't really measure the pollution impact of it.
Well, as you can see, nuclear fission power might be a better solution than coal or oil, but it's still needs huge improvements on the long term.
Then, what could be the ideal power source for the US? Hmmm, geological power can be a good alternative seeing the US geography : Iceland uses geothermy, and France is doing research on this field. In the US, the Yellowstone region seems to be a good candidate for pollution-free geothermal plants. Dams might also be something you guys could invest more into : Just look how the single Hoover Dam can power the whole Las Vegas!
Nuclear fusion is another issue as long as Humanity hasn't yet designed a useable plant using it. It is a shame (IMHO) that unrelated political issues slows down international cooperation on fusion plant research, as the US pushes hard the international negotiations to make sure the experimental fusion plant is NOT located in France, even though the local needed research facilities are available.
Well, let's put our differences apart for a while and look at what we _should_ do together. NOt a simgle country has yet the ability to work alone on fusion research. Pollution management is also an issue that can't be managed without every country investing in it (Kyoto protocol, anybody?). So we ALL should overcome our differences to make sure OUR children can enjoy oil independance and a pollution free world someday.
> Besides, we can't let the French beat us, can we? Beating the French isn't the issue here, preserving the occidental way of life is, don't you think? Let's focus on what we have in common, and work on it together.
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AFAIK, you consider security the same way you consider insurance (or as an insurance complement): How much your business continuity's worth? Should you be hacked/DDoSed, how will it affect your revenue? How much money would you need to get it all back online? You'll also need to consider how intrusive your security is: data backup solutions sometimes require you to stop services while they are processed. If you want backups to be non-intrusive, again, you'll consider how much these stopped services cost. Same goes for services availability (clustering, replication, off-site disaster recovery plans).
In short : your security investments are business specific. No easy rule of thumb in here, I'm afraid.
Hope this helps.
If they end up making a supersonic plane that allows masses to get access to supersonic flights, _that_ will be impressive.
Traffic shaping only affects UPSTREAM data.
There's unfortunatly no 100% effective way a simple user could get rid of the queues at the ISP side during heavy downloads. ICMP Source Quench were supposed to be an answer to this, but the potential exploits lead many admins to simply filter them out. IMHO, 'gaming firewalls' could ease a bit latency on assymetric lines (ADSL mostly), but true QoS can only be achieved if _both_ ends do shape their traffic (the above applies to IPv4).
As far as I've seen by experimenting myself, the benefit of such an assymetric setup is to prevent excessive pings (several seconds). Playing a FPS during heavy use is still a no go as it implies irregular ping, and an average of 100-150 ms. However, it's quite a nice setup if you plan to play some MMORPG or want to get connected through SSH.
Regards.
Even though I'm a cheese-eating-not-surrender-monkey (joking), I'll have to point out some things about the situation here :
It is true that having 75% or so of electric power coming from nuclear power has its advantages, but as others mentionned already, this is only one side of the overall issue here (car fuel? truck fuel?).
However, the use of nuclear plants is not the ultimate solution we all dream of. Cooling the reactor uses a lot of water taken from the rivers, thus warming them (heat pollution). The very same issue also means that during very hot periods of the year, nuclear plants needs to be throttled down or even stopped down to stay within safe operationnal boundaries. What's the power source then when you suddenly can't rely on nuclear plants?
Moreover, our plants are getting old, and maintenance costs are getting higher. One might state that 'there has not been a major nuclear accident in France since the program began.', but what if these accidents are yet to come? We had pretty good maintenance as long as the company owning the plants was owned by the state, but now that it's a private company, what about the maintenance funding if the company needs to cut some budgets to stay competitive? (You've had some idea of the issues caused by private power companies in Calif. lately, don't you?)
On a side note, nuclear fuel reprocessing is supposed to be handled properly here - the US even sent us some old nuclear warheads load to be converted to plant fuel, but the reprocessing facilities lack transparency in their operation. We know that it is a sensitive activity, but because of that, we can't really measure the pollution impact of it.
Well, as you can see, nuclear fission power might be a better solution than coal or oil, but it's still needs huge improvements on the long term.
Then, what could be the ideal power source for the US? Hmmm, geological power can be a good alternative seeing the US geography : Iceland uses geothermy, and France is doing research on this field. In the US, the Yellowstone region seems to be a good candidate for pollution-free geothermal plants. Dams might also be something you guys could invest more into : Just look how the single Hoover Dam can power the whole Las Vegas!
Nuclear fusion is another issue as long as Humanity hasn't yet designed a useable plant using it. It is a shame (IMHO) that unrelated political issues slows down international cooperation on fusion plant research, as the US pushes hard the international negotiations to make sure the experimental fusion plant is NOT located in France, even though the local needed research facilities are available.
Well, let's put our differences apart for a while and look at what we _should_ do together. NOt a simgle country has yet the ability to work alone on fusion research. Pollution management is also an issue that can't be managed without every country investing in it (Kyoto protocol, anybody?). So we ALL should overcome our differences to make sure OUR children can enjoy oil independance and a pollution free world someday.
> Besides, we can't let the French beat us, can we?
Beating the French isn't the issue here, preserving the occidental way of life is, don't you think? Let's focus on what we have in common, and work on it together.
Best regards from abroad.