Climate scientists are saying we have a controllable/modifiable effect on our climate. Certain politicians are using those claims justify numerous changes to our society (both national and global).
Like any science (including astronomy), climate science has had it's missteps. It happens, it's part of science (yes, it is science) to be wrong. When you're wrong as a scientist, generally, you figure out where you went wrong, figure out what's right and move on. The fact is that politics is now heavily involved in "climate science". The problem isn't necessarily that politics is involved, it's that money is involved. The fact that politics is involved is a prime indicator that an extremely large amount of money is involved. Once you get to that stage, it's very difficult for the current state of climate science (the real stuff) to be wrong anymore. It has to be right, whether or not it is. Climate scientists claim to be vilified, treated like pariahs. Yet, at every turn, any of their skeptics are equally vilified.
It's become too hard for most of us (including some of the loudest proponents of climate science's current state) to see where the money ends, and the science begins. If that gargantuan obstacle weren't enough, we have some obvious problems. First and foremost, the climate changes on its own. It does, really. We've had (at least) two full-on ice ages, plus a mini ice age only a 150-ish years ago. Any guesses on what happens between ice ages? Wait for it... global warming. Ice melts, oceans rise, species die out, mass hysteria. Except no people were around to cause it, or hell, even care.
Oh yeah, Mars is warming too. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
These are huge obstacles to proving the veracity of the science itself. And while claiming they're being marginalized, they in turn are marginalizing any and all skeptics. Just watch, if any "climate science" proponent actually reads this far, just for bringing up already "refuted/explained" facts, I'll be shouted down, insulted, and asked for my "proof", or described as an ignoramus for not knowing/believing the existing "proof". And thus the public arena of this science has devolved into a global shouting match. Which only really benefits the people set to reap huge profits from legislation being proposed.
Climate science has some valid points, and getting the research done right is hugely important. But, if it's no longer possible (politically) for climate science's current state to be wrong, then almost assuredly, it will never be (scientifically) right. And, for the last 15 years (probably more), it doesn't look (to me) like it's allowed to be wrong anymore. I tend to rebel against that, simply on principle.
Now, back to the problem at hand. Astronomers don't appear to have hordes of women (or worse, the De Beers corporation) demanding we increase taxes and fund mining expeditions to this diamond planet. So, my reaction to their claim is a random "cool", and I'm done with it.
I've already seen numerous ways that $3.50+/gallon gas affects my life (besides filling up my car). My food costs have gone up, my honey-do list costs have gone up, anything that relies somehow on petroleum products anywhere in the pipeline sees a larger number out of my wallet. Now, based on "massive accumulated scientific evidence", which corporate greed, via politics, has _nothing_ to do with, legislation is being proposed that can increase my electric bill substantially (most notably, cap-and-trade). Yet, based on what I've seen of gas prices (oooh, a real trickle down effect), my electric bill isn't the only hit my wallet is going to take.
Discover something, that may or may not be true, but nobody else really cares about? Whatever. Discover something (again, may or may not be exactly as stated) that creates a vast legion of (nearly religious) believers, a vast potential source of income for certain corporations (at everyone else's expense, of course) and (via the first two) a significant power base for political players. Expect a few skeptics.
Executing an unborn (or partially born, which is legal in some states) child because someone doesn't want to accept the responsibility for their choices is ok, but aborting a grown human who has committed atrocious crimes, and undergone due process, isn't. That's good logic?
Perhaps you should employ a little consistency in your own thought process, before yammering about someone else's.
First of all, how can you have a scientific position on abortion? It's a moral issue, not a scientific one.
Second, Abortion is pretty much a clear-cut case: the vast majority of abortions take place while the foetus is several millimeters long. They are not human beings, don't even have a brain let alone pain centers, and don't even remotely look like a child. You may still be against abortion -- and I am even willing to admit there is a moral component to this -- but it definitely require a bit more than the fuzzy statement given above.
"First" and "Second" are basically the same point. Except "Second" manages to provide the lone counter example to "First". There is science in this argument. When, exactly, does a pregnancy change from "blob of cells with potential" to "human child". Strip out the media, the politicians, the religiously opinionated.. hell, strip out you and me for that matter. At some point that question can (and should) be answered objectively. We know without a doubt, it happens during pregnancy. There's no valid (read: scientific) argument that says an otherwise-random blob of cells is human. But, conversely, babies can be born weeks, even month, prematurely and (with assistance) survive and lead useful lives. At some point between those two points the semi-random cells become human.
In my view, semi-random cells are a scientific curiosity. Do as you please. A human being already has multiple laws protecting his/her life; I don't care if it's still inside your body.
Third, evolution is also pretty much a clear-cut case: we have evidence of evolution happening right now, under our very noses. Evolution has been proven true, again and again, since Darmin formulated it in the 19th century, and only the brainwashed religious masses still contest it. There are even 'sophisticated' theologians who are perfectly willing to admit that evolution and the existence of God are perfectly compatible, for Pete sake!
As opposed to the brainwashed nonreligious masses? Blindly believing in a scientific theory is little better than believing in a fairy tale (religious, or otherwise). Yes, small scale experiments readily demonstrate adaptation. I just watched a show yesterday where a guy showed us the "evolution" from shark to ray, using recently caught specimens. (how did he know rays evolved from sharks, and not the other way around?).
Anyway, my biggest problem with evolution is "the jump". You know the one. The part about humans are able to make microprocessors and argue about whether or not we evolved from apes, while every other species (including every other primate) on the planet (at best) can use a rock to smash something to eat or a stick to get bugs to crawl on it to eat (see a pattern?) and could give a shit about what it evolved from?
There's nothing in between. There's nothing even trying to be in between. Every fossil record we can find of something that might have been in between has two glaring problems: 1) we just guessing, and 2) nothing has risen to take it's place. There's nothing, nowhere, where another species is trying to figure out the secret of indoor plumbing.
Now, before you start going bonkers on me, I'm not interested in fairy tales. Regardless if they're a matter of "faith" or branded "scientific". I think biologists have a long way to go before they'll be able tell us what really happened. In the mean time, evolution is a long (very long) way from being a clear cut case.
Fourth, pretty much everything I said about evolution is also true about global warming: this is not a scientific problem: it is a political problem and a problem of corporate propaganda (meaning: there are some very very rich, powerful and influential people who still want to pollute unhindered by rules and regulations). Period.
Again, it shouldn't be a policital or media, or corporate propaganda problem. It _should_ be a scientific problem. But there's too
This isn't a case of an independent study finding a different result, this is the original report itself undermining its own principle. Which doesn't say much for the judge in question...
I think that most of us will see a movie on a lark, or a trailer.
Yup. A $6 matinee ($12 with a SO.) and a 3 hour time commitment (including travel) is a lot less than a $50 (pushing $60 these days, plus taxes) and 20 hour commitment. Yeah, some games suck so bad we give up a lot sooner than 20 hours. But many games are so in-depth, you've usually sunk at least that much time into the thing before giving up.
A movie costs very little compared to a game. Of course I'll go see a movie that looks decent on the trailer, long before I buy a new game. Not that I do much of either, but... *shrug*
How can there be a 3 year backlog if all they do is stamp "approve" on the thing.
That's either got to be the cushiest job on the planet (BREAK TIME! Smoke'em if you've got em).. or the most asinine (Translate the application into Urdu, reverse every other word, perform the ritual two hour tiki-dance,...)
While journalism pretends to be balanced and accurate, aka "the truth"; press releases are under no such pretense.
Press Releases for major (i.e. publicly traded) companies follow a standard where "truth" and "legally defensible" are interchangeable.
Small companies like this (fishing for grant money) are more likely to follow: cash = EV (statement).
Where EV is something on the order of:
likely to get sued = (1 - (statement accuracy %)) * fudge factor 1 likely to get grant = (statement accuracy %) * fudge factor 2 net expected value = ((likely to get grant) * (value of grant)) - ((likely to get sued) * (cost of litigation))
Now, craft statement such that "net expected value" is maximized, while keeping within tolerances for "likely to get sued". Some companies have a low tolerance, therefore the statement will be completely (or at least nearly) interchangable with "legally defensible". Other companies have a much higher tolerance; often because the decision makers already have a scapegoat in mind:).
There's alot of less-than-informed beliefs surrounding this topic.
The fact that you have the right of free speech does not obligate me in any way, shape or form.
The misconception stems from the confusion between speech and access. Because I don't have much of an audience, no one really cares that don't have any obligation to grant you access to that audience. But access to Google's audience suddenly appears to be a right, and refusing access to that audience seems like censorship. It's not.
Google is not denying your rights to free speech, they're denying you access to their audience.
On the up side, that's the nice thing about the internet.. it re-leveled the playing field. Again. For $5 a month, you can say (nearly) anything you want, and the whole world has the opportunity to see it. If you actually have something interesting to say, you can build your own audience, and then refuse to grant others access to your audience:)
5) it is his belief this computer was connected to the internet with a valid public IP address _based on data recovered from the computer's registry_
6) this is the not same hard drive used to share copyrighted sound recordings. The hard drive displayed a "lack of user created files"
7) yet the disk did manage to contain a resume (generally, that's a user created file).
Doesn't seem like they know a whole lot and are just fishing. They have a computer IP address that was involved in file sharing, and (I'm assuming) Verizon's logs show it to be Ms Lindon's IP at the time. They have a hard drive image (how was that obtained, btw? legally?) that wasn't used to share files, in fact wasn't used for much of anything.. unless you count a resume.
If Ms Lindon has a wireless router, they'll never find the hard drive of the computer actually used. If they manage to confiscate a computer just on a fishing trip, some laws need to be changed.. quickly.... that'll be US$4000.00 please
Got the Vic 20 (5K version) for christmas one year after I had taken a computer class in Jr High. The High School wouldn't let me take their class until I was actually in High School (losers). So Dad bought me the Vic 20. Plugged it into the TV, and my parents couldn't watch TV anymore. I had no tape drive, or disk drive.. so I'd write a program (usually games or animations), get mad at the "out of memory" error, then get mad that I couldn't save anything:)
Got a disk drive for my following birthday, and got the C1702 monitor for the following Christmas. Unfortunately the adapter only worked for the C64 (darn it all), and Dillards (heh) didn't have the Vic 20 adapter, and it would take 6 weeks to get one in (you don't say!)... so Dad bought me the C64 on the spot (Suh-Weet!)
Now, instead of going to the public high school, I ended up going to a small private school.. no computer class. Wait, it gets worse. The principle decides to go to the local Vo-Tech and get a computer certification so he can teach the class. I help him with his homework... they won't let me take the class (losers).
technicality: Clinton was not impeached for having an affair. He was impeached for committing perjury (knowingly telling a bald faced lie, in a court of law, under oath). Something you and I would have seen the inside of the gray-bar hotel for.
Not defending Bush here, but not happy about Clinton either.
Explain why Windows would be a better OS for developing countries where they're trying to keep computer prices extremely low per machine.
And when discussing TCO, take into account the fact that labor will be relatively cheap, and the money spent on labor will stay in country, whereas purchasing the computers (and OS/software/etc) will be money leaving the country.
I have a CS degree from a no-name University. Never been a problem for me. Getting that first job is the biggest issue (unless you're from the _most_ prestigous CS schools). Once you get that job and a couple years good experience there, no one (or close enough that you won't notice) cares where your degree is from.
By the time I had 3 years experience, everyone looked at that and the fact I had a degree.
Now getting that first job, if you're not from MIT, Standford, Carnegie Mellon, etc (basically the top five or so CS schools + Ivy League), you'll be lumped in with everyone else in the world. Moving up from a backwater (but accredited) University to a major state University does next to nothing for you. If you can't make the top schools, don't worry about it. I doubt anyone will notice what school you went to. They'll want to see GPA, internships, and work experience while in school.
Now, speaking as someone who is occassionally responsible for interviewing and making hiring recommendations, all I look at for new grads is GPA, internships, work experience and personal projects. I never look at what school you graduated from.
As I've responded before, I use SuSE on my desktop, although I'm starting to reconsider that.
However, I can't stand any pretty packaged distro on my servers. Too much crap that I have no interest in gets installed even on their "server" installation.
With Slackware, I install _exactly_ what I want, and nothing else. That's the attraction: almost every option available, and absolute control over what gets installed and how it gets configured. Mind you, you have to think, even learn something occasionally, but you can't beat getting exactly what you want.
Generally RAID5 or RAID 10 (not 0+1) is what you'd like to see, but 5 requires a minumum of 3 disks (4 or 5 is better), and 10 requires a minumum of 6 (again, more x2 is better) disks. For personal use, there's just not that much space in the chasis for that many disks. Not to mention the potential cost of acquiring that many disks.
Really, your only choice is RAID1. Two disks, maybe a card (if you don't use the Mobo RAID Controller that seems to be standard these days). For Hardcore (even personal) usage, you're probably better off going with SCSI. However for light use, IDE is fine.
I haven't seen alot on SATA RAID yet, but it seems to be pretty popular. I would imagine it'd be fine for light use as well.
First, as a business, I have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Given my legal budget, I don't care what you have to say. I don't have the ability, let alone the inclination to defend you.
Secondly, the fact that you have freedom of speech does not obligate me, in any way, to provide a platform for your speech. The fact that I'm willing to sell space on my platform does not make it an obligation.
Slashdot Mirror
Climate scientists are saying we have a controllable/modifiable effect on our climate. Certain politicians are using those claims justify numerous changes to our society (both national and global).
Like any science (including astronomy), climate science has had it's missteps. It happens, it's part of science (yes, it is science) to be wrong. When you're wrong as a scientist, generally, you figure out where you went wrong, figure out what's right and move on. The fact is that politics is now heavily involved in "climate science". The problem isn't necessarily that politics is involved, it's that money is involved. The fact that politics is involved is a prime indicator that an extremely large amount of money is involved. Once you get to that stage, it's very difficult for the current state of climate science (the real stuff) to be wrong anymore. It has to be right, whether or not it is. Climate scientists claim to be vilified, treated like pariahs. Yet, at every turn, any of their skeptics are equally vilified.
It's become too hard for most of us (including some of the loudest proponents of climate science's current state) to see where the money ends, and the science begins. If that gargantuan obstacle weren't enough, we have some obvious problems. First and foremost, the climate changes on its own. It does, really. We've had (at least) two full-on ice ages, plus a mini ice age only a 150-ish years ago. Any guesses on what happens between ice ages? Wait for it ... global warming. Ice melts, oceans rise, species die out, mass hysteria. Except no people were around to cause it, or hell, even care.
Oh yeah, Mars is warming too. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
These are huge obstacles to proving the veracity of the science itself. And while claiming they're being marginalized, they in turn are marginalizing any and all skeptics. Just watch, if any "climate science" proponent actually reads this far, just for bringing up already "refuted/explained" facts, I'll be shouted down, insulted, and asked for my "proof", or described as an ignoramus for not knowing/believing the existing "proof". And thus the public arena of this science has devolved into a global shouting match. Which only really benefits the people set to reap huge profits from legislation being proposed.
Climate science has some valid points, and getting the research done right is hugely important. But, if it's no longer possible (politically) for climate science's current state to be wrong, then almost assuredly, it will never be (scientifically) right. And, for the last 15 years (probably more), it doesn't look (to me) like it's allowed to be wrong anymore. I tend to rebel against that, simply on principle.
Now, back to the problem at hand. Astronomers don't appear to have hordes of women (or worse, the De Beers corporation) demanding we increase taxes and fund mining expeditions to this diamond planet. So, my reaction to their claim is a random "cool", and I'm done with it.
I've already seen numerous ways that $3.50+/gallon gas affects my life (besides filling up my car). My food costs have gone up, my honey-do list costs have gone up, anything that relies somehow on petroleum products anywhere in the pipeline sees a larger number out of my wallet. Now, based on "massive accumulated scientific evidence", which corporate greed, via politics, has _nothing_ to do with, legislation is being proposed that can increase my electric bill substantially (most notably, cap-and-trade). Yet, based on what I've seen of gas prices (oooh, a real trickle down effect), my electric bill isn't the only hit my wallet is going to take.
Discover something, that may or may not be true, but nobody else really cares about? Whatever. Discover something (again, may or may not be exactly as stated) that creates a vast legion of (nearly religious) believers, a vast potential source of income for certain corporations (at everyone else's expense, of course) and (via the first two) a significant power base for political players. Expect a few skeptics.
Oh please... some of us are well adjusted adults with jobs and all, and can afford our own basement to camp in ;)
I've always said, the difference between a geek and nerd is that a geek lives in his own basement.
But the reverse logic works for you?
Executing an unborn (or partially born, which is legal in some states) child because someone doesn't want to accept the responsibility for their choices is ok, but aborting a grown human who has committed atrocious crimes, and undergone due process, isn't. That's good logic?
Perhaps you should employ a little consistency in your own thought process, before yammering about someone else's.
First of all, how can you have a scientific position on abortion? It's a moral issue, not a scientific one.
Second, Abortion is pretty much a clear-cut case: the vast majority of abortions take place while the foetus is several millimeters long. They are not human beings, don't even have a brain let alone pain centers, and don't even remotely look like a child. You may still be against abortion -- and I am even willing to admit there is a moral component to this -- but it definitely require a bit more than the fuzzy statement given above.
"First" and "Second" are basically the same point. Except "Second" manages to provide the lone counter example to "First". There is science in this argument. When, exactly, does a pregnancy change from "blob of cells with potential" to "human child". Strip out the media, the politicians, the religiously opinionated .. hell, strip out you and me for that matter. At some point that question can (and should) be answered objectively. We know without a doubt, it happens during pregnancy. There's no valid (read: scientific) argument that says an otherwise-random blob of cells is human. But, conversely, babies can be born weeks, even month, prematurely and (with assistance) survive and lead useful lives. At some point between those two points the semi-random cells become human.
In my view, semi-random cells are a scientific curiosity. Do as you please. A human being already has multiple laws protecting his/her life; I don't care if it's still inside your body.
Third, evolution is also pretty much a clear-cut case: we have evidence of evolution happening right now, under our very noses. Evolution has been proven true, again and again, since Darmin formulated it in the 19th century, and only the brainwashed religious masses still contest it. There are even 'sophisticated' theologians who are perfectly willing to admit that evolution and the existence of God are perfectly compatible, for Pete sake!
As opposed to the brainwashed nonreligious masses? Blindly believing in a scientific theory is little better than believing in a fairy tale (religious, or otherwise). Yes, small scale experiments readily demonstrate adaptation. I just watched a show yesterday where a guy showed us the "evolution" from shark to ray, using recently caught specimens. (how did he know rays evolved from sharks, and not the other way around?).
Anyway, my biggest problem with evolution is "the jump". You know the one. The part about humans are able to make microprocessors and argue about whether or not we evolved from apes, while every other species (including every other primate) on the planet (at best) can use a rock to smash something to eat or a stick to get bugs to crawl on it to eat (see a pattern?) and could give a shit about what it evolved from?
There's nothing in between. There's nothing even trying to be in between. Every fossil record we can find of something that might have been in between has two glaring problems: 1) we just guessing, and 2) nothing has risen to take it's place. There's nothing, nowhere, where another species is trying to figure out the secret of indoor plumbing.
Now, before you start going bonkers on me, I'm not interested in fairy tales. Regardless if they're a matter of "faith" or branded "scientific". I think biologists have a long way to go before they'll be able tell us what really happened. In the mean time, evolution is a long (very long) way from being a clear cut case.
Fourth, pretty much everything I said about evolution is also true about global warming: this is not a scientific problem: it is a political problem and a problem of corporate propaganda (meaning: there are some very very rich, powerful and influential people who still want to pollute unhindered by rules and regulations). Period.
Again, it shouldn't be a policital or media, or corporate propaganda problem. It _should_ be a scientific problem. But there's too
an anti-laser was just a flashlight /shrug
And how much are the Macs with features compared to the lower priced notebooks? You know, the ones with fewer features that I don't need/want?
I can confirm this too:
--- Report for: Aug 14 ---
16034 Total email handled
262 stopped by Postfix rules
14969 stopped by Spamhaus block-list
398 stopped by SpamAssassin
0 stopped by Anti-Virus
405 emails delivered to users
A month ago, Total email handled was over 30K, every day. The email delivered to users remains relatively unchanged.
You'd think someone that rich could find cheaper ways to get abused!
Yup. A $6 matinee ($12 with a SO.) and a 3 hour time commitment (including travel) is a lot less than a $50 (pushing $60 these days, plus taxes) and 20 hour commitment. Yeah, some games suck so bad we give up a lot sooner than 20 hours. But many games are so in-depth, you've usually sunk at least that much time into the thing before giving up.
A movie costs very little compared to a game. Of course I'll go see a movie that looks decent on the trailer, long before I buy a new game. Not that I do much of either, but ... *shrug*
They want to keep track of the people who don't want to be tracked ... *blink*
"It's 10:00 do you know where your children are?"
AM or PM?
How can there be a 3 year backlog if all they do is stamp "approve" on the thing.
.. or the most asinine (Translate the application into Urdu, reverse every other word, perform the ritual two hour tiki-dance, ...)
That's either got to be the cushiest job on the planet (BREAK TIME! Smoke'em if you've got em)
The parent is right.
:).
While journalism pretends to be balanced and accurate, aka "the truth"; press releases are under no such pretense.
Press Releases for major (i.e. publicly traded) companies follow a standard where "truth" and "legally defensible" are interchangeable.
Small companies like this (fishing for grant money) are more likely to follow: cash = EV (statement).
Where EV is something on the order of:
likely to get sued = (1 - (statement accuracy %)) * fudge factor 1
likely to get grant = (statement accuracy %) * fudge factor 2
net expected value = ((likely to get grant) * (value of grant)) - ((likely to get sued) * (cost of litigation))
Now, craft statement such that "net expected value" is maximized, while keeping within tolerances for "likely to get sued". Some companies have a low tolerance, therefore the statement will be completely (or at least nearly) interchangable with "legally defensible". Other companies have a much higher tolerance; often because the decision makers already have a scapegoat in mind
There's alot of less-than-informed beliefs surrounding this topic.
.. it re-leveled the playing field. Again. For $5 a month, you can say (nearly) anything you want, and the whole world has the opportunity to see it. If you actually have something interesting to say, you can build your own audience, and then refuse to grant others access to your audience :)
The fact that you have the right of free speech does not obligate me in any way, shape or form.
The misconception stems from the confusion between speech and access. Because I don't have much of an audience, no one really cares that don't have any obligation to grant you access to that audience. But access to Google's audience suddenly appears to be a right, and refusing access to that audience seems like censorship. It's not.
Google is not denying your rights to free speech, they're denying you access to their audience.
On the up side, that's the nice thing about the internet
5) it is his belief this computer was connected to the internet with a valid public IP address _based on data recovered from the computer's registry_
.. unless you count a resume.
.. quickly. ... that'll be US$4000.00 please
6) this is the not same hard drive used to share copyrighted sound recordings. The hard drive displayed a "lack of user created files"
7) yet the disk did manage to contain a resume (generally, that's a user created file).
Doesn't seem like they know a whole lot and are just fishing. They have a computer IP address that was involved in file sharing, and (I'm assuming) Verizon's logs show it to be Ms Lindon's IP at the time. They have a hard drive image (how was that obtained, btw? legally?) that wasn't used to share files, in fact wasn't used for much of anything
If Ms Lindon has a wireless router, they'll never find the hard drive of the computer actually used. If they manage to confiscate a computer just on a fishing trip, some laws need to be changed
Got the Vic 20 (5K version) for christmas one year after I had taken a computer class in Jr High. The High School wouldn't let me take their class until I was actually in High School (losers). So Dad bought me the Vic 20. Plugged it into the TV, and my parents couldn't watch TV anymore. I had no tape drive, or disk drive .. so I'd write a program (usually games or animations), get mad at the "out of memory" error, then get mad that I couldn't save anything :)
... so Dad bought me the C64 on the spot (Suh-Weet!)
.. no computer class. Wait, it gets worse. The principle decides to go to the local Vo-Tech and get a computer certification so he can teach the class. I help him with his homework ... they won't let me take the class (losers).
Got a disk drive for my following birthday, and got the C1702 monitor for the following Christmas. Unfortunately the adapter only worked for the C64 (darn it all), and Dillards (heh) didn't have the Vic 20 adapter, and it would take 6 weeks to get one in (you don't say!)
Now, instead of going to the public high school, I ended up going to a small private school
technicality: Clinton was not impeached for having an affair. He was impeached for committing perjury (knowingly telling a bald faced lie, in a court of law, under oath). Something you and I would have seen the inside of the gray-bar hotel for.
Not defending Bush here, but not happy about Clinton either.
You don't have kids, do you?
You realize this is slashdot ... right?
And when discussing TCO, take into account the fact that labor will be relatively cheap, and the money spent on labor will stay in country, whereas purchasing the computers (and OS/software/etc) will be money leaving the country.
I have a CS degree from a no-name University. Never been a problem for me. Getting that first job is the biggest issue (unless you're from the _most_ prestigous CS schools). Once you get that job and a couple years good experience there, no one (or close enough that you won't notice) cares where your degree is from.
By the time I had 3 years experience, everyone looked at that and the fact I had a degree.
Now getting that first job, if you're not from MIT, Standford, Carnegie Mellon, etc (basically the top five or so CS schools + Ivy League), you'll be lumped in with everyone else in the world. Moving up from a backwater (but accredited) University to a major state University does next to nothing for you. If you can't make the top schools, don't worry about it. I doubt anyone will notice what school you went to. They'll want to see GPA, internships, and work experience while in school.
Now, speaking as someone who is occassionally responsible for interviewing and making hiring recommendations, all I look at for new grads is GPA, internships, work experience and personal projects. I never look at what school you graduated from.
is really working out for us, they're really on the ropes now.
As I've responded before, I use SuSE on my desktop, although I'm starting to reconsider that.
However, I can't stand any pretty packaged distro on my servers. Too much crap that I have no interest in gets installed even on their "server" installation.
With Slackware, I install _exactly_ what I want, and nothing else. That's the attraction: almost every option available, and absolute control over what gets installed and how it gets configured. Mind you, you have to think, even learn something occasionally, but you can't beat getting exactly what you want.
Generally RAID5 or RAID 10 (not 0+1) is what you'd like to see, but 5 requires a minumum of 3 disks (4 or 5 is better), and 10 requires a minumum of 6 (again, more x2 is better) disks. For personal use, there's just not that much space in the chasis for that many disks. Not to mention the potential cost of acquiring that many disks.
Really, your only choice is RAID1. Two disks, maybe a card (if you don't use the Mobo RAID Controller that seems to be standard these days). For Hardcore (even personal) usage, you're probably better off going with SCSI. However for light use, IDE is fine.
I haven't seen alot on SATA RAID yet, but it seems to be pretty popular. I would imagine it'd be fine for light use as well.
First, as a business, I have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. Given my legal budget, I don't care what you have to say. I don't have the ability, let alone the inclination to defend you.
Secondly, the fact that you have freedom of speech does not obligate me, in any way, to provide a platform for your speech. The fact that I'm willing to sell space on my platform does not make it an obligation.