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The game wouldn't be over quite yet, IANA still has some reserved pools which it could open up. Thats almost half their user base :P

While I would welcome such technology, I don't believe it is the bottleneck we should chasing at the moment. Sure it's great if your PC gets a 20 times faster CPU, however if you are still using a HDD to store data the speed increase won't do much good :P

You know you are a geek when you are given a 100 piece screwdriver kit, and you don't need to fake happiness. :D

You are absolutely right. Look at the past 3 major conflicts: Cold War, WWII & WWI. (Note: I have intentionally over-simplified the wars mentioned for the sake of argument) WWI: First proper use of propaganda and information control aiding the physical conflict. WWII: All out propaganda and information war in parallel to physical conflict. Cold War: First information war. Sporadic outbreaks of physical conflict. Following that pattern, what do you think the next major conflict will be like? Idea's are more powerful than bullets, so who would be more vulnrable to destabilisation: A country with an open information system, or a country with heavily regulated information system? So in a way, they are acting in the ideals of defense. However is this the defense of the country, or the protection of themselves?

While they are at it, why not just get it over with and create a whitelist. Thats what they want in the end. The internet gives a voice to the people, allows organisation, free information and discussion. Pretty much anything that "Running a Country 101" says to avoid. I do not buy the "protect the children" reason. I feel they are only guising it as that because you cannot argue with it, and if you do you will be branded as some kind of pervert or degenerate. I like how this is the government that supposedly rallied internet users using open technologies over the internet to get them in power, but now that they are in they want to take that away. Transparency my arse, the only thing transparent are the conservatives sense of subtlety.

It's still a load of rubbish. If parents want to set up a web filter, fine. If ISP's want to offer a web filter service, fine. However it should not be mandatory for an ISP to offer that kind of service. I am sure a child see's more sexual content on television than on the internet, however if a voluntary scheme was somehow set up to filter television there would be a backlash. I firmly believe in ISP's being a common carrier, they should not interfere with content in any way shape or form, even if requested by the subscriber.

I think part of the problem is the abundance of relatively straight-forward certifications and organisations who don't know what they are. Their IT Guy could have been a Microsoft Certified Professional, however the only exam he did was 70-270 which only teaches the basics of XP (I don't even think it cover's how to turn the Firewall on). So when he went to interview for the job, it could have been a person who wasn't very computer literate, so Microsoft Certified Professional sounded good.

I run PFSense, absolutely love it. It's a great solution.

I wouldn't use XAMPP on a public facing server. It's great as a local testing server, however many of the included packages are out of date, and vulnerable to attack.

TBH, the only reason I think organisations use IIS is because you can get support from Microsoft. If Apache fails, you better hope your system administrator knows what hes doing or your screwed.

In terms of getting used to a OS X, I don't think you would need much preparation. It's fairly easy to pick up and you get used to it after about a week or so. My suggestion would be the mac, mainly because its what OS X runs best on, and you can also run Windows so you can have both platforms running fine. Rather than one hacked-up OS.

If it is rollover effects you are trying to do, may I suggest using CSS (:hover) or Javascript (onMouseOver) instead? It will offer greater compatibility, load quicker and not harm your SEO.

I would love to have a full-on command center, however I struggle to adequately use 2 monitors let alone 3 or 4.

It's a mixture of Maplin, Cool Components, Scan, Overclockers and RS. :P

In my opinion, its just the outcasts of the internet trying to feel accepted by banding together themselves to form the over-stretched anus of the internet. Their DDoS attacks don't really have any affect at all beyond making them feel important and making them think that they can influence things on a global scale when in reality, they are at the bottom of the totem pole. Sure, they took down the RIAA, MPAA, BPI and Scientology websites for an hour or so, and even managed to slow down Tumblr, but as far as I am aware, all these organisations still exist and are operating as normal. Their users may have been slightly annoyed for the duration, but will be back using their services again and will have probably forgotten the incident ever happened (or may not have even know it was a DDoS and thought it was just some down time).