I would put China at #1. We did recently decide to ban Huawei from our country's 5G network, so breaking our existing network seems like an obvious retaliation.

Russia has no reason that I know of beyond international hockey to dislike us anymore than any other western nation. Still, they may be trying to hack everyone and just managed to have success against Rogers.

So I'm not exactly sure when this started but it was sometime before 7am CDT. It's now 5pm CDT and it's still out. I'm surprised it has lasted this long.

Think of congestion as a cost, like fuel. If fuel cost goes up, driving goes down. If congestion increases, driving goes down as people modify their behaviour to avoid the time-cost of congestion. They pick the closer store, they take the train (where possible), or they don't take the trip at all and stay at home.

A car driving along at 60 km/h consumes more fuel per hour than a car at idle. Thus a congested street has less fuel consumed per hour, and people start choosing alternatives, all of which have lower fossil fuel consumption than a private motor vehicle.

There are plenty of 9 seat planes on the market today, and the companies that make them are making money. Maybe you won't fly on one, but this is a real market.

I believe the issue is the quality of the security screening in these countries.

I think the court's opinon was this:
- the blogger made statements which were factually incorrect
- the blogger, in his blog postings, while making his point, frequently employed hyperbole
- a reasonable reader would conclude that this author is exaggerating for rhetorical effect, not claiming actual facts
- therefore, the defamation suit is without merit, and the rantings of this blogger are protected free speech
- You also, can say that the members of Duck Dynasty are liars committing fraud, even on a blog that many read, and have confidence the US courts will protect your right to say it. Provided you don't sound like anyone who's making factual statements.

Sure, scanning 4 billion addresses in a hour sounds like a lot of data, but conceivable with today's high-speed computers and tech.

But 3.4 x 10^29 billion addresses, as contained in IPv6? Not the same feasibility at all.

We need to get more creative about funding methods. What ever happened to micropayments? If you pitched in 5 cents for every article with merit that you read, would that make a difference? We must have a better idea than advertising.

Wait, were the questions dumb, or the answers?

Allowing your clients to select dumb, insecure questions means that you have an optionally secure registration platform, which requires your customers to be competent about security.

To me, this kind of incedent points out the need for a more expensive, higher security registrar, who designs systems which are very hard to subvert. Till now, DNS regstrars have competed on price. This story says that security is important too, especially when control of the domain leads directly to cash money.

Mod up please. This is much more reliable that the shrill /. summary, and the poorly informed article.

A peering dispute is totally conceivable, it's happened many times in the past between ISPs. Google paying a consumer network fees to carry traffic has *never* happenend. The former is much more likely.

Why does Slashdot keep linking to secondary sources, like Forbes.com, when the primary source is so easily available? Laziness would be my first guess.

Here is the much-better Renesys blog post: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/11/could-it-happen-in-your-countr.shtml

Questions about their methods of reasoning are the most interesting.

There may be 5 ISPs, each operating their own logical notwork, with their own IP space, servers, and everything--but they may all share the same physical fibre optic cable out of the country--especially if the country is an Island. New Zealand would be a good example of this: it is about 1500 km from Australia, and 1000 km from Fiji. There are only a few submarine fibre optic cables connecting to the rest of the world. Perhaps Southern Cross Cable and SPIN only?

The authors acknowledge they were mostly unable to analyse this, and had to guess about the number of physical conduits. They say they will have more to say about the limited physical connections in the future.

No you didn't hear the word "oil". You heard that the US is a net exporter of Gasoline, Diesel, and other fuels. These are refined products, not crude oil. Since 2008, the cunsumption rates (demand) for gasoline, diesel, and other fuels has fallen, as part of enonomic contraction. Thus, large refineries, especially on the Gulf coast near Houston, TX (Galveston, Texas City) have spare refining capacity. So, they buy crude, and refine it to produce gasoline and other products. Just as crude oil is traded globally, so is gasoline. The purchasers are nations with no refineries, like the Bahamas, or areas will less refining capacity than needed, like Equador or Argentina.

US consuption of oil has fallen from about 21 Mbbl/day to 18 Mbbl/day (rough). US production of oil is about 5 Mbbl/day. The US is nowhere near being an oil exporter. But, the US is importing some oil, refining it, and then exporting the refined products, like this:

1. Import oil
2. Refine into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, etc
3. Export for profit!

So, this is a good business for the oil refiners, and puts money into the US economy. It does not mean that the US is oil independent, not even close.

Also, the cost of shipping oil across the ocean is insignificant compared to the value of the product to the end user. Ocean transportation is a tiny component of carbon emissions. I'd guess less than 1% off the top of my head.

The quotes indicate that a third party is making the assertation. So the BBC's staff has not looked at the evidence and concluded there is a weakness, the BBC is merely repeating a conclusion reached by others. The BBC has not verified the validy of this conclusion. Therefore the BBC is not reporting this as an established fact, they are reporting that reachers from the University of Cambridge are saying this, and the BBC isn't certain it's a demonstrable fact.

If you read the full article of any headline that contains quotes, you will find that the origin of the statement in quotes is not the BBC's writers, but another organization or person: a third party.

The BBC is trying to help you understand the source of the informaiton, an important part of journalism. They are trying to help you understand what they are reporting, not belittling your intelligence with 'emphasis' quotes.

Skype doesn't work on 1.6.

There are security flaws in 1.6 that could cause problems for Aunt Nettie.

1.6 doesn't support tethering or wi-fi hotspot.

Are these trivial non-issues to average people wanting to use a state-of-the-art smartphone? I think these are more than trivial.

Software is the real power of a smartphone.Not giving users update while the competition from Apple does is really working against the big advantage smartphones offer.