I use a 4-drive QNAP NAS at home. I have 2.68TB of RAID-5 storage (3x1.5TB drives), with a hot spare in case a drive fails. The NAS shares out NFS and Samba, which are accessed by all computers/devices in my home over a wired gigabit and N-wireless network, so speed is not an issue.
I backup my main workstation to the NAS, so I have a full backup of my most important files. Although I am now considering cloud storage as an offsite copy for extra redundancy.
After years of using home-built NAS boxes running NASlite or freeNAS, I decided to go for a commercial box. It was not the cheapest option, but I sleep a lot better knowing that my data is relatively safe from hardware failure. I currently have ~1.5TB data on the NAS. QNAP supports a lot of different services like web, ftp and SQL servers, as well as media servers. There is also a package system that lets you download and install specific services, but I am not using this. There are dual gigabit interfaces so you can even have redundant links to the device or team them up for more bandwidth, although even a single gigabit interface is not a bottleneck... it's hard drive transfer rates.
QNAP has also been really good at releasing new firmwares on a regular basis, with each one typically adding new features. Although, I have not had a single issue over the past ~2 years. It's been one of the best hardware purchases I ever made.
You have a LICENSE to use software, you do not have a "right" and there is no ownership of the software, except by the company/persons who wrote it. You merely own the media the software is distributed on. It has been this way for decades, no matter your personal opinions on the matter.
Last time I checked, using software is not a right, anywhere. Please check your facts before spouting this bullshit.
MS very clearly stated that RT devices would require a signed bootloader and that secure boot cannot be disabled on RT devices. Plus, this is a device manufactured by MS themselves. All of these are negative strikes against getting Linux running on the device.
If you want to run Linux on a tablet, why would you start with a Surface, rather than the zillions of Android tablets that are available far cheaper and are more widely available?
However, I predict this is only a short-term inconvenience. This will get hacked at some point to make it possible, it's only a matter of time.
Only the early Pi's were built in China. The newest models are manufactured in a Sony factory in the UK, and I believe that very few if any are still manufactured in China. In fact, the Pi Foundation has stated numerous times that they wanted the Pi to be manufactured in the UK from the start, but at the time this was impossible when considering the necessary quality and fixed selling price with little margin. Thanks to the Sony deal they are now able to do this.
I have a first revision Pi from China, and it works flawlessly. I even applied the highest stock overclock (1GHz) and it's totally stable without any additional cooling. Also, note that many of the user problems are due to sub-standard power supplies or using USB devices which draw too much power from the USB ports. Remember, the Pi does not come with one, so the user has to supply one or buy a third party power supply. The quality of these vary widely. I purchased one that was pre-tested with the Pi and offered directly by the UK distributor and like I mentioned, I've had zero problems.
Umm... you CAN "close" metro apps if you want to. Just drag any open Metro app from the top downwards. Simple.
I've been using Win8 since the early builds, and once you learn the a new tricks it's fine. People who don't like change can stick with Windows 95 or whatever old crusty OS they want to.
I'm sorry, but having "been" to Europe doesn't qualify your stance at all. Have you actually lived here?
As an American living in Europe for more than 12 years, I can unequivocally say that it is more stable and safe on this side of the Atlantic. I don't need to worry much about my job, and if I do lose it I can count on a social safety net while I look for another good paying job, rather than take the fist shit-job that happens along just so I can (almost) pay my bills. There are far too many Americans in this position today.
I would also like to point out that the economic problems in most of Europe are not nearly in the same class as the USA. We did not have a housing market crash at the same time due to an unregulated mortgage system that was free to take huge risks with the people's money. The countries in Europe that have serious problems have mainly brought that on themselves, for example in Greece and Italy where tax avoidance is an art form and a large percentage of people pay zero tax. I hate to break it to you, but the economic systems do not operate when people and businesses do not pay their equal and fair share of taxes. Notice I said equal and fair share... when everyone contributes, the system will work. In the US, a major problem is that so many large multi-national corporations pay little or zero taxes (GE, I'm looking at you). Starbucks is under investigation in the UK and Germany for paying almost no corporate tax on billions in earnings there over the past decade. When companies do not pay their taxes, guess who has to make up the slack? This is the single biggest problem in US economics today, that companies are allowed and even encouraged to evade paying taxes. Until this loophole is fixed, the US economy will not recover.
Did you realize that, when adjusted for inflation, the average middle income in the US has basically been unchanged for the past several decades? The "middle" class is not any better off today than they were in the 60's, it's stagnant. Do the research yourself, the numbers and facts are out there. At least in Europe, the middle-class is much better off over the same time period, and depending on where you live you are hugely better off (e.g. former Soviet republics, eastern Europe).
You're lucky the US bank even knew what SWIFT was. A couple years ago I needed to transfer funds to my mom in the US. She lives in a small town but uses one of the major US banks. It took me over a week of emails and multiple calls to the bank to get the necessary information to make the transfer from a major European bank.
I make regular transfers to the US and it still amazes me that it takes ~8-10 calendar days for the funds of an ELECTRONIC transfer to show in the receiving account. The sending and receiving banks are always the same, so it's not as if they are unknown entities. Intra-bank transfers where I live are immediate, and inter-bank transfers are usually less than one working day.
And.... checks? Why the hell are you still using checks in the US? That went out of fashion here in the 80's. I rarely carry any cash, practically everything here can be paid for electronically including public transportation.
I means seriously, the Pi is designed to get kids (and adults) to LEARN how a computer works and how to program the device. It's TRIVIAL to download a system image, transfer it to an SD card and boot your Pi. Hell, RS even offered to sell me a pre-formatted SD with the OS pre-installed! How hard is it to click "add one to cart", if you don't want to set up the SD yourself?!?
Seriously, the Pi is not for the iDevice consumer... it's for people who are interested to learn how things work and how to build and code stuff. Making the device idiot-proof is not the way forward.
Something SORELY lacking on American roads. On the Autobahn, you don't find soccer moms driving their Camry or Prius (or whatever they drive these days) in the left lane doing 50 mph. The left lane is strictly for PASSING and you move over as quickly and safely as possible when cars come up behind you. You do NOT block the left lane and always move to the right lane(s) when possible, in other words when you are not passing someone else. Driving on the Autobahn is not the same a just any fast highway in the US...
Disclaimer: I'm originally from Texas and I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR this highway... you couldn't pay me to drive on it.
I'm glad to see big companies pushing XP's viability out the window. It needs to die, swiftly. As someone who manages several large Windows-based software projects, keeping XP around and supported is a headache and costs a lot of money and time. You see, Vista, 7 and now 8 are very much alike from a support and development standpoint. XP has fallen so far behind and is now the edge case, it's the exception. Some of our software seriously pushes (and exceeds) the limits of memory on a 32-bit OS when working with very large data sets (I'm talking 1.5 GB here and more in the future), and well 64-bit XP is kind of a bastard child so it's a no-go (check how many software actually support 64-bit XP, it's very rare). 64-bit starting from Vista is fine.
It is a major pain to support XP while trying to move forward. Having to support XP holds us all back, whether you realize it or not. It can't die fast enough. It served its purpose and now it's time to move on.
Try a different keyboard and/or mouse. I booted my Pi for the first time last night using a Dell keyboard which happened to have a passive USB hub built-in. Only about 2 out of 3 keystrokes were registering making login practically impossible (password keystrokes are not echoed). I switched to a different keyboard without a USB hub and it works fine. I believe the issue is popping up when one or more USB devices try to draw a bit too much power from the USB ports. My Pi worked flawlessly after the keyboard swap. I am using the 230v euro power supply sold by RS Components by the way, which I believe is rated for 1200ma output at 5v.
Wait a minute... weren't all the ATI (now AMD) fanboys claiming a couple years ago that because ATI was developing more "open" drivers that they would rule the linux landscape?
A most informative and insightful post, too bad you didn't post under your real account. This perfectly sums it up for me, an American who has been living abroad for 12 years. The perspective you get from seeing things "from outside" is enlightening. And it makes me feel good about my decision to leave the US for a better life elsewhere. We were brought up being taught "America is the best!" at everything. Sadly, this was really just propaganda. It is good in some areas but on the whole... in areas that really matter, not so much.
I hate to break it to you, but the world has changed a lot in the past couple decades. The world would be a much better place if the US would stop throwing it's military might around and invading other countries. This applies also to the clandestine behind-the-scenes crap the US still pulls all over the world.
Watch the movie Team America, World Police once in a while. There is a LOT of not-so-hidden truth in that movie.
Disclaimer: I am an American, but with the benefit of living abroad for 12 years and seeing things "from the outside". I can tell you, it's not a pretty picture.
I'm American and have been living in Finland for 12 years. I am fully supported by the social services here and have the same rights as someone born here in that regards. And I don't even have Finnish citizenship (although I can get that any time I want).
Let's not forget where the whole world economic downturn started in 2007-8: The US of A.
Europe is NOT falling apart, any more than the US. If anything, it is more stable here in Europe. Sure, the are the current issues with the monetary union, but a lot of that is just pure politics. And the Nordic countries with a strong social net are doing fine, so there goes one of your arguments.
Now, let's talk about the word fascist... and does it mean what YOU think it means... (the USA is current leaning much more towards wholly becoming a fascist state than almost anywhere else on the planet).
I hate responding to AC's, but purchase of the OEM license has always been tied to some piece(s) of hardware purchased at the same time. I know there are lots of "workarounds" and these have been pretty liberally sold to home builders even without hardware, but the fact is it was/is a requirement for OEM Windows licenses.
I could care less about being able to purchase OEM anymore. The real question: Is the PULSB license transferable to new hardware, unlike OEM? This is why I would buy the retail licenses, they can be transferred to a new PC... OEM cannot and MS can deny your activation on new hardware if they suspect you are copying it.
Well, perhaps if a chemical is *new*... you should first understand the risks and dangers of an unknown chemical before you start putting it into consumer products?
It *IS* the burden for companies to produce safe products that are not dangerous to the people using them when used as designed. Especially when it is something we put in or on our bodies that can negatively affect health.
Since when does all BitTorrent traffic = piracy? I download 10's of gigabytes/year using BT and none of it is pirated content. All of my BT traffic is legitimate and legal.
In my opinion, this association of "all" BT traffic with illegal downloading is preventing BT from being more widely utilized for legitimate uses. It is nothing more than a distributed file-transfer protocol; the fact that some amount of BT traffic is used for illegal activities is really irrelevant. We should be driving more legitimate usage of BT to tilt the traffic patterns more towards legal use of the protocol and drown out the "noise" of illegal usage. This is the only way to ensure widespread use of the protocol in a way that survives any legal attempts to block it. The more BT is used for illegal activity the more likely it will be blocked or filtered at some point.
Just imagine if someone "discovers" that TCP/IP is being used to transfer these illegal BT packets all over the internets...
+5 insightful. This is the most likely reason why so many old software projects do not go open source. Hardly anyone completely writes all their own software in-house and a lot of software depends on licensed third-party libraries, drivers, etc.
Holy hell, all the Apple fanboys descended on this story at one time.
Come on, nobody outside MS has even had their hands on this yet and it's already predicted to be a failure. Can we at least wait until it's out on the market and see if it's any good first? I'm no MS fanboy but this is ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
I use a 4-drive QNAP NAS at home. I have 2.68TB of RAID-5 storage (3x1.5TB drives), with a hot spare in case a drive fails. The NAS shares out NFS and Samba, which are accessed by all computers/devices in my home over a wired gigabit and N-wireless network, so speed is not an issue.
I backup my main workstation to the NAS, so I have a full backup of my most important files. Although I am now considering cloud storage as an offsite copy for extra redundancy.
After years of using home-built NAS boxes running NASlite or freeNAS, I decided to go for a commercial box. It was not the cheapest option, but I sleep a lot better knowing that my data is relatively safe from hardware failure. I currently have ~1.5TB data on the NAS. QNAP supports a lot of different services like web, ftp and SQL servers, as well as media servers. There is also a package system that lets you download and install specific services, but I am not using this. There are dual gigabit interfaces so you can even have redundant links to the device or team them up for more bandwidth, although even a single gigabit interface is not a bottleneck... it's hard drive transfer rates.
QNAP has also been really good at releasing new firmwares on a regular basis, with each one typically adding new features. Although, I have not had a single issue over the past ~2 years. It's been one of the best hardware purchases I ever made.
You have a LICENSE to use software, you do not have a "right" and there is no ownership of the software, except by the company/persons who wrote it. You merely own the media the software is distributed on. It has been this way for decades, no matter your personal opinions on the matter.
Last time I checked, using software is not a right, anywhere. Please check your facts before spouting this bullshit.
Why is this NEWS?
MS very clearly stated that RT devices would require a signed bootloader and that secure boot cannot be disabled on RT devices. Plus, this is a device manufactured by MS themselves. All of these are negative strikes against getting Linux running on the device.
If you want to run Linux on a tablet, why would you start with a Surface, rather than the zillions of Android tablets that are available far cheaper and are more widely available?
However, I predict this is only a short-term inconvenience. This will get hacked at some point to make it possible, it's only a matter of time.
Only the early Pi's were built in China. The newest models are manufactured in a Sony factory in the UK, and I believe that very few if any are still manufactured in China. In fact, the Pi Foundation has stated numerous times that they wanted the Pi to be manufactured in the UK from the start, but at the time this was impossible when considering the necessary quality and fixed selling price with little margin. Thanks to the Sony deal they are now able to do this.
I have a first revision Pi from China, and it works flawlessly. I even applied the highest stock overclock (1GHz) and it's totally stable without any additional cooling. Also, note that many of the user problems are due to sub-standard power supplies or using USB devices which draw too much power from the USB ports. Remember, the Pi does not come with one, so the user has to supply one or buy a third party power supply. The quality of these vary widely. I purchased one that was pre-tested with the Pi and offered directly by the UK distributor and like I mentioned, I've had zero problems.
Umm... you CAN "close" metro apps if you want to. Just drag any open Metro app from the top downwards. Simple.
I've been using Win8 since the early builds, and once you learn the a new tricks it's fine. People who don't like change can stick with Windows 95 or whatever old crusty OS they want to.
What is a dead president doing with $1.5M worth of iPads in the first place?
I'm sorry, but having "been" to Europe doesn't qualify your stance at all. Have you actually lived here?
As an American living in Europe for more than 12 years, I can unequivocally say that it is more stable and safe on this side of the Atlantic. I don't need to worry much about my job, and if I do lose it I can count on a social safety net while I look for another good paying job, rather than take the fist shit-job that happens along just so I can (almost) pay my bills. There are far too many Americans in this position today.
I would also like to point out that the economic problems in most of Europe are not nearly in the same class as the USA. We did not have a housing market crash at the same time due to an unregulated mortgage system that was free to take huge risks with the people's money. The countries in Europe that have serious problems have mainly brought that on themselves, for example in Greece and Italy where tax avoidance is an art form and a large percentage of people pay zero tax. I hate to break it to you, but the economic systems do not operate when people and businesses do not pay their equal and fair share of taxes. Notice I said equal and fair share... when everyone contributes, the system will work. In the US, a major problem is that so many large multi-national corporations pay little or zero taxes (GE, I'm looking at you). Starbucks is under investigation in the UK and Germany for paying almost no corporate tax on billions in earnings there over the past decade. When companies do not pay their taxes, guess who has to make up the slack? This is the single biggest problem in US economics today, that companies are allowed and even encouraged to evade paying taxes. Until this loophole is fixed, the US economy will not recover.
Did you realize that, when adjusted for inflation, the average middle income in the US has basically been unchanged for the past several decades? The "middle" class is not any better off today than they were in the 60's, it's stagnant. Do the research yourself, the numbers and facts are out there. At least in Europe, the middle-class is much better off over the same time period, and depending on where you live you are hugely better off (e.g. former Soviet republics, eastern Europe).
And 90% of APU's suck. Coincidence?
You're lucky the US bank even knew what SWIFT was. A couple years ago I needed to transfer funds to my mom in the US. She lives in a small town but uses one of the major US banks. It took me over a week of emails and multiple calls to the bank to get the necessary information to make the transfer from a major European bank.
I make regular transfers to the US and it still amazes me that it takes ~8-10 calendar days for the funds of an ELECTRONIC transfer to show in the receiving account. The sending and receiving banks are always the same, so it's not as if they are unknown entities. Intra-bank transfers where I live are immediate, and inter-bank transfers are usually less than one working day.
And.... checks? Why the hell are you still using checks in the US? That went out of fashion here in the 80's. I rarely carry any cash, practically everything here can be paid for electronically including public transportation.
Lame.
I means seriously, the Pi is designed to get kids (and adults) to LEARN how a computer works and how to program the device. It's TRIVIAL to download a system image, transfer it to an SD card and boot your Pi. Hell, RS even offered to sell me a pre-formatted SD with the OS pre-installed! How hard is it to click "add one to cart", if you don't want to set up the SD yourself?!?
Seriously, the Pi is not for the iDevice consumer... it's for people who are interested to learn how things work and how to build and code stuff. Making the device idiot-proof is not the way forward.
Add one more to the list:
- Lane discipline!
Something SORELY lacking on American roads. On the Autobahn, you don't find soccer moms driving their Camry or Prius (or whatever they drive these days) in the left lane doing 50 mph. The left lane is strictly for PASSING and you move over as quickly and safely as possible when cars come up behind you. You do NOT block the left lane and always move to the right lane(s) when possible, in other words when you are not passing someone else. Driving on the Autobahn is not the same a just any fast highway in the US...
Disclaimer: I'm originally from Texas and I wouldn't go anywhere NEAR this highway... you couldn't pay me to drive on it.
I'm glad to see big companies pushing XP's viability out the window. It needs to die, swiftly. As someone who manages several large Windows-based software projects, keeping XP around and supported is a headache and costs a lot of money and time. You see, Vista, 7 and now 8 are very much alike from a support and development standpoint. XP has fallen so far behind and is now the edge case, it's the exception. Some of our software seriously pushes (and exceeds) the limits of memory on a 32-bit OS when working with very large data sets (I'm talking 1.5 GB here and more in the future), and well 64-bit XP is kind of a bastard child so it's a no-go (check how many software actually support 64-bit XP, it's very rare). 64-bit starting from Vista is fine.
It is a major pain to support XP while trying to move forward. Having to support XP holds us all back, whether you realize it or not. It can't die fast enough. It served its purpose and now it's time to move on.
Try a different keyboard and/or mouse. I booted my Pi for the first time last night using a Dell keyboard which happened to have a passive USB hub built-in. Only about 2 out of 3 keystrokes were registering making login practically impossible (password keystrokes are not echoed). I switched to a different keyboard without a USB hub and it works fine. I believe the issue is popping up when one or more USB devices try to draw a bit too much power from the USB ports. My Pi worked flawlessly after the keyboard swap. I am using the 230v euro power supply sold by RS Components by the way, which I believe is rated for 1200ma output at 5v.
Wait a minute... weren't all the ATI (now AMD) fanboys claiming a couple years ago that because ATI was developing more "open" drivers that they would rule the linux landscape?
A most informative and insightful post, too bad you didn't post under your real account. This perfectly sums it up for me, an American who has been living abroad for 12 years. The perspective you get from seeing things "from outside" is enlightening. And it makes me feel good about my decision to leave the US for a better life elsewhere. We were brought up being taught "America is the best!" at everything. Sadly, this was really just propaganda. It is good in some areas but on the whole... in areas that really matter, not so much.
I hate to break it to you, but the world has changed a lot in the past couple decades. The world would be a much better place if the US would stop throwing it's military might around and invading other countries. This applies also to the clandestine behind-the-scenes crap the US still pulls all over the world.
Watch the movie Team America, World Police once in a while. There is a LOT of not-so-hidden truth in that movie.
Disclaimer: I am an American, but with the benefit of living abroad for 12 years and seeing things "from the outside". I can tell you, it's not a pretty picture.
I'm American and have been living in Finland for 12 years. I am fully supported by the social services here and have the same rights as someone born here in that regards. And I don't even have Finnish citizenship (although I can get that any time I want).
Let's not forget where the whole world economic downturn started in 2007-8: The US of A.
Europe is NOT falling apart, any more than the US. If anything, it is more stable here in Europe. Sure, the are the current issues with the monetary union, but a lot of that is just pure politics. And the Nordic countries with a strong social net are doing fine, so there goes one of your arguments.
Now, let's talk about the word fascist... and does it mean what YOU think it means... (the USA is current leaning much more towards wholly becoming a fascist state than almost anywhere else on the planet).
... basic scientific literacy of elected officials
I'm seriously trying to get my head around that one. Is this supposed to be a joke?
I hate responding to AC's, but purchase of the OEM license has always been tied to some piece(s) of hardware purchased at the same time. I know there are lots of "workarounds" and these have been pretty liberally sold to home builders even without hardware, but the fact is it was/is a requirement for OEM Windows licenses.
I could care less about being able to purchase OEM anymore. The real question: Is the PULSB license transferable to new hardware, unlike OEM? This is why I would buy the retail licenses, they can be transferred to a new PC... OEM cannot and MS can deny your activation on new hardware if they suspect you are copying it.
Well, perhaps if a chemical is *new*... you should first understand the risks and dangers of an unknown chemical before you start putting it into consumer products?
It *IS* the burden for companies to produce safe products that are not dangerous to the people using them when used as designed. Especially when it is something we put in or on our bodies that can negatively affect health.
Since when does all BitTorrent traffic = piracy? I download 10's of gigabytes/year using BT and none of it is pirated content. All of my BT traffic is legitimate and legal.
In my opinion, this association of "all" BT traffic with illegal downloading is preventing BT from being more widely utilized for legitimate uses. It is nothing more than a distributed file-transfer protocol; the fact that some amount of BT traffic is used for illegal activities is really irrelevant. We should be driving more legitimate usage of BT to tilt the traffic patterns more towards legal use of the protocol and drown out the "noise" of illegal usage. This is the only way to ensure widespread use of the protocol in a way that survives any legal attempts to block it. The more BT is used for illegal activity the more likely it will be blocked or filtered at some point.
Just imagine if someone "discovers" that TCP/IP is being used to transfer these illegal BT packets all over the internets...
+5 insightful. This is the most likely reason why so many old software projects do not go open source. Hardly anyone completely writes all their own software in-house and a lot of software depends on licensed third-party libraries, drivers, etc.
Excellent choice, one I'd make too.
Holy hell, all the Apple fanboys descended on this story at one time.
Come on, nobody outside MS has even had their hands on this yet and it's already predicted to be a failure. Can we at least wait until it's out on the market and see if it's any good first? I'm no MS fanboy but this is ridiculous.