Bullshit. You're in violation or you're not. This is clearly NOT violation. About boxes are stupid anyway.
Another example is Redhat's failure to submit changes to the code base to the code base authors. This is an egregious sin. It doesn't violate any licenses, but it is very rude.
Bullshit again. I work commercially with lots of GPLed software every day. We make changes, and we don't submit the changes back... until we're done! When we have a beta product, and beta quality modifications we keep them internal. When we're sure the changes represent the quality we like, only then do the changes go back. Have patience. They haven't released the product yet.
If they decide to fork, then that's fine too.
in a brazen display of disrespect, they put their head GNOME guy in charge of "fixing" KDE
Hmm, put their most experienced GUI guy in charge of packinging up and "redhatizing" a GUI. What a horrible decision. (Not)
If you don't want people customizing and redistributing your software, then don't make it customizable or redistributable. If you don't want people changing your software to, say, look like gnome, then license it apropriately. Either you believe in free software or you don't. It's very simple.
Let me offer you an analogy. LinuxMall wants a Unified Linux, instead of all these disparate distributions. That way they don't have to worry about customer confusion, and can offer a single meta-distribution. Step one is to remove the Redhat logos from Redhat. Step two is to make linuxconf look like YaST. Step four is to rewrite RPM without naming it or submitting the changes to Redhat. Oh, by the way, they hired Debian to be in charge of the retrofit.
How many distros out there started by taking redhat and changing the logos? Mandrake, Turbo, LinuxPPC, YellowDog, Caldera... Plenty of others I'm sure. They may have deviated significantly now, but they all started in the same place. You don't hear redhat bitching.
BTW, if you plan to accuse me of being a RedHat or Gnome fanboy, you may care to peruse my previous posts first. I use Debian, and I have other issues with redhat (like when they take GPLd software and change the title and copyright notice before releasing it, or when they ship documentation for said program with the new name even though the documentation isn't under an open license, all without giving any credit to the owner anywhere much less in an about box). I also think that "desktop environments" are a waste of cycles, memory, and pixels. They all suck.
In some ways, that's a pretty severe indictment of Open Source. UML is about software analysis and design. Most Open Source projects, sadly, do not design their software, but start coding from minute one.
UML is hardly a necissary tool for designing software. In fact, if the task is simple enough source code can be the best design document. People that are too closed minded to consider more than one solution to a problem make poor software developers.
most Open Source hackers don't have the patience to design their software (or validate it, or write documentation, or do usability studies
You unfairly limit this to Open Source developers. Colsed source developers are just as lazy if not more, and typically the only reason such a programmer will think out a design before starting or write complete documentation is because it's company policy.
I know of quite a few businesses that dont feel the need to pay for an upgrade when Word 97 does everything they need. There's no incentive to upgrade. (Even now, because they don't use the document protection features)
Seriously, I would like to hear one compelling reason to upgrade from Word 97 to a newer version if all you use word for is word processing and basic mail merge.
The best keyboard you can get is the one you use correctly. Get your wrists off the desk, back away from the keyboard until your arms are at length and sit up straight. If your posture looks like a concert pianist you probably won't have pain.
Also, don't forget to look at your other activities. Your pain might occur while you are typing, but it might be caused by something you do after work that strains your wrists. I tried lots of things before I found out that my pain was caused by how I was playing racquetball, and not by my typing. Now I can type all day again.
Think of it this way, why wouldn't CNN refuse to allow you to visit their site? You aren't earning them any revenue now. They can't sell ads for your hit because the advertisers know you can block them or ignore them. Mindshare? That's so 1990s. If they make you turn on palladium, suddenly they can force you to watch the ad before you read the article. The only readers that will be making them any money are the ones with palladium turned on. To me that sounds like a damn good reason to block you.
You are short sighted. You have the right to use content as you please after the copyright expires (If you're in the US, at least). You will loose ths right with the adoption of technologies like palladium, because when the copyright protection ends, the DRM protection will continue. Palladium does change the bounds of copyright.
If someone can't get Max Payne for free, no skin off my back, you know?
If all that stuff wasn't bad enough, palladium probably won't stop people from pirating commercial software. People will still pirate software, but we'll all be deprived of content unless we want view it under terms we have no control over.
I'm not supporting it.
Soon you will be unable to purchase an Intel or AMD processor without supporting this technology. Your data is passing through one of those right now (even if your machine is not based on an Intel or AMD processor, the server you're reading on is).
some people want pay per view. I don't
Oh, but you'll pay-per-view. You might not pay in cash, but you will pay. If you don't want to open your wallet, they'll be able to use palladium to force you to view advertisements. Want to read the news? First let us tell you how drinking pepsi will get you laid. Want to listen to that music you bought at the store, first let us tell you about Lance Bass Jr's new album and play a sample track. I'm not talking about pay-per-view television, I'm talking about pay-per-view everything. You won't be able to block the ads either, because the rights management won't let you.
Four firewire ports on a PCI card and a cable cost $18.50 including shipping. I've seen them for less then that at CompUSA. I don't think that lack of firewire ports is holding anybody back from buying firewire devices.
Let's see. Our marketing department is still insisting that we support IE4 and Netscape4. But somehow, they're going to suddenly start insisting that we target a fractional share of the market exclusively.
Right.
This isn't a technology for use by marketing departments, it's a technology for use by people who create content that matters (no offense to your marketing department). The web wouldn't exist if marketing were it's only use. Think about what truly makes the web valuable in our society, and then tell me that you think my exampile is silly.
Think music, games, movies, news stories, fiction, and scientific journals. Those are the types of things that will slowly stop being available as readily.
So these doomsday scenerios mostly don't affect us Linux users, and even the darkest picture you can paint doesn't have a chance of affecting media piracy for a decade or two.
There are these things called 'fair use rights' that you are allowed by law. This new technology gives copyright holders power that is not offered to them by copyright law. You loose freedom by the adoption of this technology. Whether or not you see this technology directly effecting you in the near future it should not be supported.
Perhaps it will upset you when they use the technology to make all future entertainment media pay-per-view/listen.
They're having a hard enough time getting ipv6 implemented. People don't replace production routers very often; especially backbone routers. If microsoft manages to pull that off, it'll take over a decade.
Soon you will see web pages that you cannot load without Palladium enabled. Don't beleive me? You can bet that any media related plugin will support it, and stupid content providers will enable it. You'll see palladium enabled image formats, movies, interactive flash apps, all that will refuse to load without palladium enabled. The web will become largely text only for people without a new machine and windows.
Shortly thereafter, expect MS "enhancements" to IE that can allow web sites to disable the view source, copy, paste, and print functions on web pages. You'll have to have palladium enabled to view those sites.
You'll start see processor ads relating the processor to the internet that aren't lying. "See more of the internet with the new Intel Pentium 6 processor."
Welcome to the Microsoft only internet. You'll have to purchase a new computer and OS license to participate.
*2 doesn't deduct minutes from your account, and they don't charge me a fee to talk to a representative. What plan do you have that you get screwed with a $3 fee? If they started that shit with me I'd be gone fast. When they tried to switch the start of nighttime minutes 9:00 PM I threatend to cancel, and I got to keep 8:00 as my start time. Similarly when they got rid of first incoming minutes being free... I've still got them. You probably don't even want to know how many minutes I've got for $35.99. It's like it never stopped being 1998 when they were actually cheap.
You need to get in touch with the retention department and tell them why you are unhappy (and why you're going to cancel if they don't fix it). The retention department can basically offer you anything you can talk them into. They are not stuck offering the "plans" that the regular salesman have. They'll hook you up. Don't even bother trying to explain it to the first phone monkey that you get when you call, just ask for the retention department first thing.
SGI didn't choos to comapre this to a C90, the slashdot submitter did. SGI primarily compared it to the "IBM® eServer p690 and Sun Microsystems Sun Fire"
The part that I really find interesting is that the top three in the list all outperform this by twice as much, the #1 spot being held by a machine that can do over 500GB/sec.
It's still over 12x faster then the quad Itaniums I used to work with, and probably much cheeper then the NEC machines and the Cray...
Re:Covad's Motto... If it don't work, sucks for yo
on
Covad On The Mend
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
There are plenty of things that a CLEC can do (or can get the ILEC to do) if your line doesn't support DSL out of the gate. There are usually other pairs they can try, or alternate wiring that can be used in the CO, or poor stretches of your line that can be replaced. There are also some problems that are easy to fix, but difficult to diagnose. Of course every hour they spend trying to make your line work is 6-12 months of profit they loose paying technicians, so there is no incentive for them to try and solve problems. There are commercial DSL providers that will solve the problems for you if you are willing to pay. I have worldcom as my CLEC (but not as my ISP), and they were very helpful getting DSL to work in my location in a situation that covad would have walked away from.
Experienced telco labor is expensive, and you can't have cheap broadband, free instalation, and good technicians all at the same time. You only get to pick two.
Re:Installation not so hard -- and not so importan
on
Libranet 2.7 Released
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
(if that in fact is not the very same package that insisted on dragging X along with it)
build-essential does not include X, or anything X related. The text based installer is not forgiving to people who answer questions claiming to be an expert when they are really not. If you choose the expert options in the debian installer, and you are not a debian instalation expert, you will become lost and frustrated. This is poor social engineering on the part of the debian installer team, since most other installers require you to choose 'expert' to be able to configure things the way you want to and that causes people to claim that they are experts by default whenever they install software. If you'd like a more 'friendly' installer, you can try PGI, which is graphical, and superior to anything I've seen for any OS except suse. It is not the default installer for debian yet, but it works practically perfectly, and would likely satisfy you.
What distribution you use is personal perference, so I'm not really trying to sway you in either direction, but I would like people to know that your experience is not typical. Debian is not the right choice for everybody, but it is also not the technical nightmare that you are implying.
the supposedly superior apt system
Aah, noteriety through misunderstanding. Contrary to popular belief, it is neither apt, nor the.deb format that make debian superior..deb files and rpms are essentially equivalent. The benifit comes from the package database. All of the dependancies are consistant in the debian package database which relieves all the problems that you have installing rpms from various vendors/providers. The number of packages available directly from debian is also far greater then what is available through any other distribution.
If apt hosed your system it is either because you were using a faulty mirror, you did something wrong, or you were using unstable.
Re:Installation not so hard -- and not so importan
on
Libranet 2.7 Released
·
· Score: 2
all partitions are identified only with/dev/hdaX - with no size indication or other information
If you choose the "Partition your hard disk" option, it will show you the filesystem type and size of existing partitions when it runs cfdisk. I consider the lack of partition lables a design flaw in the msdos partition table format. If you're using other patrition table types it will correctly show you the labels too.
Also, there is a bug with the installer that precludes a net install over pcmcia hardware with a fixed IP adress.
I just did this today and it worked fine. You must have experienced user error.
So now I had a bare Woody install - really bare, like in "I need to apt-get less" bare.
This is not an ideal solution, but it sounds like what you wanted was a bare system, plus the "build-essential" meta package. It will install all of the stuff you wanted (libc-dev, less, gcc, make, etc...) without X. If you want other non standard development libraries you'll still have to load them yourself, but it's a mere 'apt-get' away. The build-essential package is great for when you want a minimalist development environment without all the typing.
Re:it takes some effort to get a workstation setup
on
Libranet 2.7 Released
·
· Score: 2
Not sure if this has changed, but when I installed Debian I had to manually install X11 by using dselect after the base install finished. And dselect is not the most user-friendly tool.
Debian has had tasksel since before potato. You don't run dselect, you check the little box next to the X option, and you're done. I haven't run dselect during an install (or at all) in three years. Similarly there are little check boxes for Gnome, KDE, C/C++ development, DNS server, Apache, DHCP server, database stuff and lots more. Basically what you'd get with any distribution. Just say 'yes' when it asks if you want to run tasksel, and no when it asks you if you want to run dselect and you're set.
As for fonts, it used to be as simple as 'apt-get install msttcorefonts'. Now you need to actually have the font package already on your system and unzipped before running the previously mentioned command.
Typical consumers don't buy backup products, so none are marketed to them (or priced for them). Besides, most people don't have more then 600MB of data that is worth any significant amount of money to them. Sure it would be annoying to loose it but most people don't have irreplaceable data that they can't live without. If you happen to be in the minority and can't live with any data loss, and you only have 160GB of data, you can use a DDS4 drive with amanda. A tape a day wouldn't put your last partial level 0 too far back in the tapeset if you need to do a single file restore, and you could do a full restore from four tapes. You can get a single DDS4 drive on ebay for fairly little money. I got one recently for $150. Add 10 tapes for another $150, and you're set for a year.
How about anybody who runs cables longer then a few meters? They all use glass. Most patch cables are still glass too. You can bend glass cables to a radius smaller than 4cm, so they're not that breakable.
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly, this borders on a GPL violation
Bullshit. You're in violation or you're not. This is clearly NOT violation. About boxes are stupid anyway.
Another example is Redhat's failure to submit changes to the code base to the code base authors. This is an egregious sin. It doesn't violate any licenses, but it is very rude.
Bullshit again. I work commercially with lots of GPLed software every day. We make changes, and we don't submit the changes back... until we're done! When we have a beta product, and beta quality modifications we keep them internal. When we're sure the changes represent the quality we like, only then do the changes go back. Have patience. They haven't released the product yet.
If they decide to fork, then that's fine too.
in a brazen display of disrespect, they put their head GNOME guy in charge of "fixing" KDE
Hmm, put their most experienced GUI guy in charge of packinging up and "redhatizing" a GUI. What a horrible decision. (Not)
If you don't want people customizing and redistributing your software, then don't make it customizable or redistributable. If you don't want people changing your software to, say, look like gnome, then license it apropriately. Either you believe in free software or you don't. It's very simple.
Let me offer you an analogy. LinuxMall wants a Unified Linux, instead of all these disparate distributions. That way they don't have to worry about customer confusion, and can offer a single meta-distribution. Step one is to remove the Redhat logos from Redhat. Step two is to make linuxconf look like YaST. Step four is to rewrite RPM without naming it or submitting the changes to Redhat. Oh, by the way, they hired Debian to be in charge of the retrofit.
How many distros out there started by taking redhat and changing the logos? Mandrake, Turbo, LinuxPPC, YellowDog, Caldera... Plenty of others I'm sure. They may have deviated significantly now, but they all started in the same place. You don't hear redhat bitching.
BTW, if you plan to accuse me of being a RedHat or Gnome fanboy, you may care to peruse my previous posts first. I use Debian, and I have other issues with redhat (like when they take GPLd software and change the title and copyright notice before releasing it, or when they ship documentation for said program with the new name even though the documentation isn't under an open license, all without giving any credit to the owner anywhere much less in an about box). I also think that "desktop environments" are a waste of cycles, memory, and pixels. They all suck.
In some ways, that's a pretty severe indictment of Open Source. UML is about software analysis and design. Most Open Source projects, sadly, do not design their software, but start coding from minute one.
UML is hardly a necissary tool for designing software. In fact, if the task is simple enough source code can be the best design document. People that are too closed minded to consider more than one solution to a problem make poor software developers.
most Open Source hackers don't have the patience to design their software (or validate it, or write documentation, or do usability studies
You unfairly limit this to Open Source developers. Colsed source developers are just as lazy if not more, and typically the only reason such a programmer will think out a design before starting or write complete documentation is because it's company policy.
I know of quite a few businesses that dont feel the need to pay for an upgrade when Word 97 does everything they need. There's no incentive to upgrade. (Even now, because they don't use the document protection features)
Seriously, I would like to hear one compelling reason to upgrade from Word 97 to a newer version if all you use word for is word processing and basic mail merge.
The best keyboard you can get is the one you use correctly. Get your wrists off the desk, back away from the keyboard until your arms are at length and sit up straight. If your posture looks like a concert pianist you probably won't have pain.
Also, don't forget to look at your other activities. Your pain might occur while you are typing, but it might be caused by something you do after work that strains your wrists. I tried lots of things before I found out that my pain was caused by how I was playing racquetball, and not by my typing. Now I can type all day again.
Think of it this way, why wouldn't CNN refuse to allow you to visit their site? You aren't earning them any revenue now. They can't sell ads for your hit because the advertisers know you can block them or ignore them. Mindshare? That's so 1990s. If they make you turn on palladium, suddenly they can force you to watch the ad before you read the article. The only readers that will be making them any money are the ones with palladium turned on. To me that sounds like a damn good reason to block you.
Well, *I* don't lose any freedoms.
You are short sighted. You have the right to use content as you please after the copyright expires (If you're in the US, at least). You will loose ths right with the adoption of technologies like palladium, because when the copyright protection ends, the DRM protection will continue. Palladium does change the bounds of copyright.
If someone can't get Max Payne for free, no skin off my back, you know?
If all that stuff wasn't bad enough, palladium probably won't stop people from pirating commercial software. People will still pirate software, but we'll all be deprived of content unless we want view it under terms we have no control over.
I'm not supporting it.
Soon you will be unable to purchase an Intel or AMD processor without supporting this technology. Your data is passing through one of those right now (even if your machine is not based on an Intel or AMD processor, the server you're reading on is).
some people want pay per view. I don't
Oh, but you'll pay-per-view. You might not pay in cash, but you will pay. If you don't want to open your wallet, they'll be able to use palladium to force you to view advertisements. Want to read the news? First let us tell you how drinking pepsi will get you laid. Want to listen to that music you bought at the store, first let us tell you about Lance Bass Jr's new album and play a sample track. I'm not talking about pay-per-view television, I'm talking about pay-per-view everything. You won't be able to block the ads either, because the rights management won't let you.
Four firewire ports on a PCI card and a cable cost $18.50 including shipping. I've seen them for less then that at CompUSA. I don't think that lack of firewire ports is holding anybody back from buying firewire devices.
Let's see. Our marketing department is still insisting that we support IE4 and Netscape4. But somehow, they're going to suddenly start insisting that we target a fractional share of the market exclusively.
Right.
This isn't a technology for use by marketing departments, it's a technology for use by people who create content that matters (no offense to your marketing department). The web wouldn't exist if marketing were it's only use. Think about what truly makes the web valuable in our society, and then tell me that you think my exampile is silly.
Think music, games, movies, news stories, fiction, and scientific journals. Those are the types of things that will slowly stop being available as readily.
Not reuters ... or the NYTimes
Don't be so sure.
So these doomsday scenerios mostly don't affect us Linux users, and even the darkest picture you can paint doesn't have a chance of affecting media piracy for a decade or two.
There are these things called 'fair use rights' that you are allowed by law. This new technology gives copyright holders power that is not offered to them by copyright law. You loose freedom by the adoption of this technology. Whether or not you see this technology directly effecting you in the near future it should not be supported.
Perhaps it will upset you when they use the technology to make all future entertainment media pay-per-view/listen.
They're having a hard enough time getting ipv6 implemented. People don't replace production routers very often; especially backbone routers. If microsoft manages to pull that off, it'll take over a decade.
Microsoft will be releasing MS-TCP to compete with ipv6 and ipsec; MS-TCP will be palladium-based.
Unlikely. Microsoft has no control over network hardware vendors. They will implement everything at the application layer. IPv4 and IPv6 will remain.
Soon you will see web pages that you cannot load without Palladium enabled. Don't beleive me? You can bet that any media related plugin will support it, and stupid content providers will enable it. You'll see palladium enabled image formats, movies, interactive flash apps, all that will refuse to load without palladium enabled. The web will become largely text only for people without a new machine and windows.
Shortly thereafter, expect MS "enhancements" to IE that can allow web sites to disable the view source, copy, paste, and print functions on web pages. You'll have to have palladium enabled to view those sites.
You'll start see processor ads relating the processor to the internet that aren't lying. "See more of the internet with the new Intel Pentium 6 processor."
Welcome to the Microsoft only internet. You'll have to purchase a new computer and OS license to participate.
*2 doesn't deduct minutes from your account, and they don't charge me a fee to talk to a representative. What plan do you have that you get screwed with a $3 fee? If they started that shit with me I'd be gone fast. When they tried to switch the start of nighttime minutes 9:00 PM I threatend to cancel, and I got to keep 8:00 as my start time. Similarly when they got rid of first incoming minutes being free... I've still got them. You probably don't even want to know how many minutes I've got for $35.99. It's like it never stopped being 1998 when they were actually cheap.
You need to get in touch with the retention department and tell them why you are unhappy (and why you're going to cancel if they don't fix it). The retention department can basically offer you anything you can talk them into. They are not stuck offering the "plans" that the regular salesman have. They'll hook you up. Don't even bother trying to explain it to the first phone monkey that you get when you call, just ask for the retention department first thing.
SGI did not single out that machine, the slashdot poster did. Period.
Besides, comparing it to a C90 is perfectly valid, since it is the machine that, up until now, held the #4 spot.
I can't beleive I'm responding to an anonymous nitpicker. If you're going to nitpick, at least grow some balls and log in.
Yep, they primarily compared them to the two machines I mentioned. Thanks.
SGI didn't choos to comapre this to a C90, the slashdot submitter did. SGI primarily compared it to the "IBM® eServer p690 and Sun Microsystems Sun Fire"
The part that I really find interesting is that the top three in the list all outperform this by twice as much, the #1 spot being held by a machine that can do over 500GB/sec.
It's still over 12x faster then the quad Itaniums I used to work with, and probably much cheeper then the NEC machines and the Cray...
There are plenty of things that a CLEC can do (or can get the ILEC to do) if your line doesn't support DSL out of the gate. There are usually other pairs they can try, or alternate wiring that can be used in the CO, or poor stretches of your line that can be replaced. There are also some problems that are easy to fix, but difficult to diagnose. Of course every hour they spend trying to make your line work is 6-12 months of profit they loose paying technicians, so there is no incentive for them to try and solve problems. There are commercial DSL providers that will solve the problems for you if you are willing to pay. I have worldcom as my CLEC (but not as my ISP), and they were very helpful getting DSL to work in my location in a situation that covad would have walked away from.
Experienced telco labor is expensive, and you can't have cheap broadband, free instalation, and good technicians all at the same time. You only get to pick two.
(if that in fact is not the very same package that insisted on dragging X along with it)
.deb format that make debian superior. .deb files and rpms are essentially equivalent. The benifit comes from the package database. All of the dependancies are consistant in the debian package database which relieves all the problems that you have installing rpms from various vendors/providers. The number of packages available directly from debian is also far greater then what is available through any other distribution.
build-essential does not include X, or anything X related. The text based installer is not forgiving to people who answer questions claiming to be an expert when they are really not. If you choose the expert options in the debian installer, and you are not a debian instalation expert, you will become lost and frustrated. This is poor social engineering on the part of the debian installer team, since most other installers require you to choose 'expert' to be able to configure things the way you want to and that causes people to claim that they are experts by default whenever they install software. If you'd like a more 'friendly' installer, you can try PGI, which is graphical, and superior to anything I've seen for any OS except suse. It is not the default installer for debian yet, but it works practically perfectly, and would likely satisfy you.
What distribution you use is personal perference, so I'm not really trying to sway you in either direction, but I would like people to know that your experience is not typical. Debian is not the right choice for everybody, but it is also not the technical nightmare that you are implying.
the supposedly superior apt system
Aah, noteriety through misunderstanding. Contrary to popular belief, it is neither apt, nor the
If apt hosed your system it is either because you were using a faulty mirror, you did something wrong, or you were using unstable.
all partitions are identified only with /dev/hdaX - with no size indication or other information
If you choose the "Partition your hard disk" option, it will show you the filesystem type and size of existing partitions when it runs cfdisk. I consider the lack of partition lables a design flaw in the msdos partition table format. If you're using other patrition table types it will correctly show you the labels too.
Also, there is a bug with the installer that precludes a net install over pcmcia hardware with a fixed IP adress.
I just did this today and it worked fine. You must have experienced user error.
So now I had a bare Woody install - really bare, like in "I need to apt-get less" bare.
This is not an ideal solution, but it sounds like what you wanted was a bare system, plus the "build-essential" meta package. It will install all of the stuff you wanted (libc-dev, less, gcc, make, etc...) without X. If you want other non standard development libraries you'll still have to load them yourself, but it's a mere 'apt-get' away. The build-essential package is great for when you want a minimalist development environment without all the typing.
Not sure if this has changed, but when I installed Debian I had to manually install X11 by using dselect after the base install finished. And dselect is not the most user-friendly tool.
Debian has had tasksel since before potato. You don't run dselect, you check the little box next to the X option, and you're done. I haven't run dselect during an install (or at all) in three years. Similarly there are little check boxes for Gnome, KDE, C/C++ development, DNS server, Apache, DHCP server, database stuff and lots more. Basically what you'd get with any distribution. Just say 'yes' when it asks if you want to run tasksel, and no when it asks you if you want to run dselect and you're set.
As for fonts, it used to be as simple as 'apt-get install msttcorefonts'. Now you need to actually have the font package already on your system and unzipped before running the previously mentioned command.
Typical consumers don't buy backup products, so none are marketed to them (or priced for them). Besides, most people don't have more then 600MB of data that is worth any significant amount of money to them. Sure it would be annoying to loose it but most people don't have irreplaceable data that they can't live without. If you happen to be in the minority and can't live with any data loss, and you only have 160GB of data, you can use a DDS4 drive with amanda. A tape a day wouldn't put your last partial level 0 too far back in the tapeset if you need to do a single file restore, and you could do a full restore from four tapes. You can get a single DDS4 drive on ebay for fairly little money. I got one recently for $150. Add 10 tapes for another $150, and you're set for a year.
Heh. I remember waiting for the day when drives would be less then $1.00 per megabyte. That wasn't even 10 years ago! Oh how quickly things change.
How about anybody who runs cables longer then a few meters? They all use glass. Most patch cables are still glass too. You can bend glass cables to a radius smaller than 4cm, so they're not that breakable.
Holy Crap!
That's either some seriously good photoshopping, or some amazing surgery! At least it's not nearly as bad as the goatse guy.