one thing that I think might be an issue is originality; as an example, take a teenager who has managed to survive to about 15 years old without seeing it to see Star Wars (the real one. "episode 4", allegedly). They won't be as impressed as we were; they have seen those clichés, those scenes, those concepts, ripped off in a dozen+ movies; The progenitor of all the rip-offs is gonna look like "same-old, same-old" to them. The same goes with games, to a degree. I say to a degree, because we don't get games of the same types as we used to; where is the modern Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Aces over Europe? the only fun flight sim I've played lately is "Attack on Pearl Harbor", and while it is undoubtedly fun, it isn't really as much fun as the originals where (it IS close). Instead, we get FPS, MMO, and RTS. and a few little independents making games that require a measurable IQ to enjoy. Of course, Xcom and Master of Magic are the first games I thought about when I read the title; those are games that require nothing more than improved graphics and bug fixes to make any game company that ships them wealthy. But what about Kings Quest? how many millions of sales did that series of games make?
Yes, for those who played it when it came out, or even a couple of years later; I can play it, it only takes me about 10 minutes to stop cringing at the graphics, and get immersed in the gameplay. But a new player, playing a 320x240 game? sorry, wouldn't fly. needs a minimum of 800x600 these days, and most people would probably say 1024x768. But that, really, is it. Multiplayer would be kinda nice, but if it screws with the gameplay, forget it. just patch the bugs, supe up the graphics, and ship it out the door.
I wish I had the mod points to give you "+1: Has a clue". I would like to point out that a total Moron or complete Moron can get themselves in serious trouble with Win2k. But aside from that, Yeah.
You really should consider setting up a MythTV box; it's relatively easy, relatively cheap, and very easy to use. if you have a old, but not too old, computer sitting around (say, 1999 or newer manufacture) it would have enough horsepower to work; all you need to get additionally is a capture device, and they can be had for less than $40 on pricewatch. It does everything a VCR does; if you don't need to record something in HD, don't; record it in low quality, you will take forever to fill your drive. And when you want to keep something, just burn it to a CD or a DVD, and put it up; just take them out of storage long enough to copy back to the PVR. I still use a VCR, but only for my enormous collection of VHS tapes, and to occasionally copy a cartoon or kids movie for my 5 year old; he has a VCR in his room, and VHS tapes last longer with him than CD's do. There are a lot of guides out there for making a PVR.
Really? I can't think of anyone I knew, from around 1987 to 2000, who didn't use their VCR for some aspect of recording. I still do for cartoons & certain movies; my 5 year old can't even look at a VCD or DVD without scratching it, but he has no problems whatsoever with VHS tapes; whenever we buy a new movie, I rip him off a copy on VHS for his room.
I'm guessing MSSQL 7/MSDE 1.0? I ran a Win98se webserver as my backup and traffic overflow server for a long time back when i had a small hosting company; the only problems were the built in SQL problems that seemed to pop up every 2 months. But, aside from a scheduled reboot every Sunday morning, it worked just fine for about 18 months. It sounds like your Win98 laptop is doing a lot more work than mine was; I'm surprised you aren't getting serious JAVA thread issues, though.
Well, yeah. I was a WAN admin for the Army. But, before that I did AS/400, OS/2, and NT4. And before that Solaris, XENIX, HP-UX, NeXT; before that some really esoteric shit. And, while I'm typing this on a Win2k server, the computer sitting next to me is running Etch; I've got MythTV running on my PVR, while my kids systems run dual boot WinXP pro/Fedora. I'm not as "fluent" with Linux as I am with Windows, but it wasn't really an option for my parents due to the environment; Juno dial-up email, and I didn't like the driver available 3 years ago for their all-in-one. The process I used is no where near as complicated as everyone is making it out to be, and the end result is a error and virus free system that 2 older people have absolutely no problems using, and will be able to continue using as long as the hardware holds out. BTW, I turned off windows update because Microsoft is apparently actively trying to break the remaining Win2k systems on the internet; several of the patches and "updates" for win2k over the last 4 years have done more harm than good for stability and security. With TPF and TCP/IP filtering it's not really an issue. (I apologize if this is a dupe; my internet sucks today)
Actually, the main problem was Juno. My Mom will not part with it. she sees no reason why she should have to part with it. she has been using it for over 10 years, knows how to search for old messages, and does so regularly; she uses it as sort of a bastard database system. it's a little over 1GB last I checked. I tried to get it to run in Wine on Sarge, I just couldn't make it work. The added complexity (for her) of doing it with VMware made Linux unrealistic. Since she WOULD NOT part with Juno, and I actually know how to set up Win2k so that it won't really EVER blow up, it was the most logical option; 6 hours initial work and a grand total of maybe 16 hours of remote support over the years, with maybe 2 hours on-site is not bad. Complex maintenance? where did you see that? 2 CD's. one is even Linux. an occasional peek in over the internet. It's not like I inflicted WinXP home, or WinME, or (shudder) Vista on them; just old, trusty, stable, almost-as-good-as-OS2 Windows 2000 Professional.
but...they don't have virus issues. Seriously. A properly configured Win2k system only gets a virus if you install it, or surf to a web site that installs it for you. TPF checks all applications when they are installed, or when an existing application gets changed and pops up a nice warning window, if they did get something like that. With TCP/IP filtering enabled you don't have to worry about any of the ports except those you know the applications will actually use. It took a little while to get them to stop opening applications that got sent to them in e-mails, but after that, no problems.
Huh.
I guess I'm doing it wrong.
I started with 2 partitions, FAT32 & NTFS, installed Win2k Pro,
then patched it up.
Installed Tiny Personal Firewall v2.0.15, Firefox (with adblock,
firenes, and IEview plugins), SpyBot, irfanview, media player classic,
WinAmp 2.95, RealVNC server 4.0, adobe 5 (this was before Foxit 3 came
out), their HP all-in-one printer software, DivX, Xvid &
various other codec packs, Audacity (my dads a musician), open office (my moms a writer), Shockwave,
Mozilla Thunderbird, Juno (my moms been using it since it was free
dial-up, she likes the interface), winzip, Winrar,
7z, notepad++, JAVA, AVG,
Picasa (when it came out), and thats essentially it.
Then, a script to rar the "my documents" folder to the 1st partition at
bootup once a week, incrementing rar filename each time; chkdsk/f
every 2 weeks at startup, and defrag every 3 weeks.
Disable all phone-home software, including windows update; to be safe,
several domains are pointed to localhost in the HOSTS file. remove all
IE & OE icons, put shortcuts for everything they are likely to
need in the alluser profile. Select registry changes to turn off some
of the more obnoxious windows stuff.
After installing all this and making sure everything plays well with
each other, I then ghosted the 2nd partion to a compressed image on the
1st.
They have 2 emergency CD's; the first blows away the NTFS partition,
then recreates it from the image on the 1st partition
The 2nd is KNOPPIX; if they can't get ahold of me or think that I need
to look at things before they use the other emergency CD. I also
encourage them to just play around with it.
This has worked perfectly for the last 3+ years; if they get suspicious
about something, I just come in through VNC viewer and take a look;
probably every day for the first 2 weeks, then maybe once a week, now
maybe once a month, if that. TPF turned on to paranoid mode doesn't let
anything get in or get installed without a pop-up telling you about it.
I go ahead and update & run SpyBot whenever I come in for a
peek (BTW, one of the recent SPyBot updates has started really screwing
with the registry; it's optimized for XP and just causes Win2k's
registry to expand); I usually update the virus definitions at the same
time, and delete some of the older "My Documents" backups.
They've usedthe emergency restore CD once, about 2 years ago;
I need to update the image on my next visit.
I'm not certain, but I think that just might be crazy enough to work! Speaking generally, though, I can see a few esoteric possibilities, but nothing that could do as much as claimed. Your main power usage is at 2 points; the display, and the antenna. you can do some amazing things with the display, like making a low power digital paper display for normal ops and leaving your relatively power hungry LCD off until you need something the paper can't handle. There is quite a bit of wastage across the EM spectrum you could minimize; I could see using optical circuitry where possible, and I've yet to see a cell phone that has a truly efficient IM setup; if it produces a signal that can be detected outside of the phone, or any part produces heat, you are wasting power. I was trying to add some formula for devising maximum theoretical antenna performance, but the filter defeated me.
For once, something that I'm actually qualified to post on! I was a Weapons system depot level tech in the navy, doing lots of work with waveguides, radar, etc. I went on to work in the private sector, doing among other things antenna design at Nortel. I can't help but say this is a bunch of shit. It is ALWAYS more energy-expensive to do wireless, it's just the way things are. If it is just the journalist making a mistake, I can see some possible advances in energy conservation using a waveguide, or even a virtual waveguide; anything else would only start to be possible if you enter the realm of high energy physics. Unless this guy's name is Tesla, and/or they have developed a completely new principle...
You have a win2k system that is bluescreening? seriously? Patched to at least sp4? faulty/incompatible hardware is the most likely explanation; It would be nice if that sort of thing just popped up a warning message, but it is Microsoft, after all.
Hey, at least the servers are running Win2k; if you HAVE to have a rock steady microsoft operating system, Win2k is without a doubt your best choice. Unless you have an old copy of XENIX laying around, of course. or OS/2 1.3
If I had mod points.... Did anyone ever start up the "buy 'em a beer" website I've often thought about starting? if so, let me know your account number.
If the standard SCSI drives were available in the same sizes as are SATA drives, I would probably say go with RAID 6; you don't have to worry about an additional drive failing while you are rebuilding (it happened to me. once. Nightmare.). By the way, I haven't done the 3x1TB SATA array, but I have done a 4x500gb one; rebuild time was 6 hours, without load. With load... well, thats the reason I suggested dual 3TB arrays; throw DFS/VFS on them, and when you have to rebuild, remove the one with the problem from the network. a Mirror set of arrays. But, honestly, I know squat about SAS; it's obviously something I'm going to have learn about, it sounds interesting as hell. Luckily, no one has asked me any questions about it yet...
I've never had any problems (or seen any real problems) with software RAID 5, all the way back to NT; I've read & seen load of problems with hardware raid. Kinda makes me wonder why anyone bothers. sure, it's a little more CPU intensive. so?
it's kind of crazy, anyway. I have a lot of digital media I keep backed up, plus source code, records. all told maybe 150gb. but, guess what? follow these simple steps: go to pricewatch. order a cheap barebones system, $150. Order 3 1TB SATA drives, and a 80gb drive, $300 Install debian on the 80gb drive. make the 3 1TB drives into a 2TB software RAID 5 array. Hook into the network, in your garage preferably. Tadaa! 2 terrabyte of storage, costing $450, that will last you for years and years. note: dust it occasionally. I would also suggest using wake on LAN to keep your power bills low, unless you live in a place where there are temperature extremes that might effect it.
But seriously, folks.. I've been using CD's for critical information backup for over a decade; when I got my first single speed burner, writable CD's were huge, heavy, and apparently near indestructible; the only protection mine have enjoyed since 1994 is that I keep them in a briefcase. When the media started getting thin & flimsy, around '99, I switched to "black" media; once again, no problems at all. It's getting harder to find the blacks lately, so I've started doing, I guess you would say "environment stress testing" on DVD rewritable media; they seem to be the toughest thing available.
BUT. for day to day operations? RAID-5. It's a no-brainer. I've got a client I setup with a software SCSI RAID-5 for their day-to-day storage back in 2000, 3 35gb drives originally, they added one in 2000, 2 more in 2001; I then switched them over to one built on 3 73gb drives; that lasted until early 2007, when they went to a 4x146gb array; in retrospect they probably should have waited a year, but oh well. Please note that the original 175gb array and the subsequent 365gb array are still in use in different departments with lesser needs. when they hit 730gb with the current array, I might suggest that they think about doing a pair of Debian soft SATA 4 disk arrays to save money; you can put together a 3TB 4 disk SATA array tomorrow for $328, while SCSI is apparently, suddenly, inexplicably, dead. can't quite figure that out.
yes.. But, they have to climb the wall, get past the guard dogs, fool the electronic entry system, climb through the ductwork, fool the motion sensors, crack the safe, then manage to get off the premises alive before the response team gets there, and even THEN they will have problems defeating the ROT13 encryption my backed up savegames are protected with. I take PBEM games Very Seriously.
This also throws several fairly mainstream websites into the call with Chester the Molester. Take for example Renderosity.com; there are probably 10,000+ images on there which are obviously intended to depict someone who is under 18 either nude or in a sexual circumstance. I can close Firefox and open any 3 of the many CGI programs available to me and generate a pornographic image of a minor in less than 5 minutes. Let me take an hour on it, and I can generate one that will be indistinguishable from an actual photograph. SO..where does it become illegal in this Brave New World? when I show the image to a third party? When I finish creating it? When it is "in the works" and obviously CGI? When I lay out the primitives and do a wiremode? When I open the software with the intention of creating the image? When I form the thought that this is what I'm going to do? Or maybe the Graphics tools themselves are illegal, since they are what makes it possible for me to potentially create a CGI rendition of Child Pornography?
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I do truly wish I had mod points. positive ones.
one thing that I think might be an issue is originality; as an example, take a teenager who has managed to survive to about 15 years old without seeing it to see Star Wars (the real one. "episode 4", allegedly).
They won't be as impressed as we were; they have seen those clichés, those scenes, those concepts, ripped off in a dozen+ movies; The progenitor of all the rip-offs is gonna look like "same-old, same-old" to them.
The same goes with games, to a degree. I say to a degree, because we don't get games of the same types as we used to; where is the modern Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Aces over Europe? the only fun flight sim I've played lately is "Attack on Pearl Harbor", and while it is undoubtedly fun, it isn't really as much fun as the originals where (it IS close).
Instead, we get FPS, MMO, and RTS. and a few little independents making games that require a measurable IQ to enjoy.
Of course, Xcom and Master of Magic are the first games I thought about when I read the title; those are games that require nothing more than improved graphics and bug fixes to make any game company that ships them wealthy.
But what about Kings Quest? how many millions of sales did that series of games make?
Yes, for those who played it when it came out, or even a couple of years later; I can play it, it only takes me about 10 minutes to stop cringing at the graphics, and get immersed in the gameplay.
But a new player, playing a 320x240 game? sorry, wouldn't fly. needs a minimum of 800x600 these days, and most people would probably say 1024x768.
But that, really, is it. Multiplayer would be kinda nice, but if it screws with the gameplay, forget it. just patch the bugs, supe up the graphics, and ship it out the door.
I wish I had the mod points to give you "+1: Has a clue".
I would like to point out that a total Moron or complete Moron can get themselves in serious trouble with Win2k.
But aside from that, Yeah.
You really should consider setting up a MythTV box; it's relatively easy, relatively cheap, and very easy to use.
if you have a old, but not too old, computer sitting around (say, 1999 or newer manufacture) it would have enough horsepower to work; all you need to get additionally is a capture device, and they can be had for less than $40 on pricewatch.
It does everything a VCR does; if you don't need to record something in HD, don't; record it in low quality, you will take forever to fill your drive.
And when you want to keep something, just burn it to a CD or a DVD, and put it up; just take them out of storage long enough to copy back to the PVR.
I still use a VCR, but only for my enormous collection of VHS tapes, and to occasionally copy a cartoon or kids movie for my 5 year old; he has a VCR in his room, and VHS tapes last longer with him than CD's do.
There are a lot of guides out there for making a PVR.
Really?
I can't think of anyone I knew, from around 1987 to 2000, who didn't use their VCR for some aspect of recording.
I still do for cartoons & certain movies; my 5 year old can't even look at a VCD or DVD without scratching it, but he has no problems whatsoever with VHS tapes; whenever we buy a new movie, I rip him off a copy on VHS for his room.
I'm guessing MSSQL 7/MSDE 1.0?
I ran a Win98se webserver as my backup and traffic overflow server for a long time back when i had a small hosting company; the only problems were the built in SQL problems that seemed to pop up every 2 months.
But, aside from a scheduled reboot every Sunday morning, it worked just fine for about 18 months.
It sounds like your Win98 laptop is doing a lot more work than mine was; I'm surprised you aren't getting serious JAVA thread issues, though.
Well, yeah. I was a WAN admin for the Army.
But, before that I did AS/400, OS/2, and NT4. And before that Solaris, XENIX, HP-UX, NeXT; before that some really esoteric shit.
And, while I'm typing this on a Win2k server, the computer sitting next to me is running Etch; I've got MythTV running on my PVR, while my kids systems run dual boot WinXP pro/Fedora.
I'm not as "fluent" with Linux as I am with Windows, but it wasn't really an option for my parents due to the environment; Juno dial-up email, and I didn't like the driver available 3 years ago for their all-in-one.
The process I used is no where near as complicated as everyone is making it out to be, and the end result is a error and virus free system that 2 older people have absolutely no problems using, and will be able to continue using as long as the hardware holds out.
BTW, I turned off windows update because Microsoft is apparently actively trying to break the remaining Win2k systems on the internet; several of the patches and "updates" for win2k over the last 4 years have done more harm than good for stability and security. With TPF and TCP/IP filtering it's not really an issue.
(I apologize if this is a dupe; my internet sucks today)
Actually, the main problem was Juno.
My Mom will not part with it. she sees no reason why she should have to part with it. she has been using it for over 10 years, knows how to search for old messages, and does so regularly; she uses it as sort of a bastard database system. it's a little over 1GB last I checked.
I tried to get it to run in Wine on Sarge, I just couldn't make it work.
The added complexity (for her) of doing it with VMware made Linux unrealistic.
Since she WOULD NOT part with Juno, and I actually know how to set up Win2k so that it won't really EVER blow up, it was the most logical option; 6 hours initial work and a grand total of maybe 16 hours of remote support over the years, with maybe 2 hours on-site is not bad.
Complex maintenance? where did you see that? 2 CD's. one is even Linux. an occasional peek in over the internet.
It's not like I inflicted WinXP home, or WinME, or (shudder) Vista on them; just old, trusty, stable, almost-as-good-as-OS2 Windows 2000 Professional.
heh. you said "Vista"
go wash your mouth out with soap.
but...they don't have virus issues. Seriously. A properly configured Win2k system only gets a virus if you install it, or surf to a web site that installs it for you. TPF checks all applications when they are installed, or when an existing application gets changed and pops up a nice warning window, if they did get something like that. With TCP/IP filtering enabled you don't have to worry about any of the ports except those you know the applications will actually use.
It took a little while to get them to stop opening applications that got sent to them in e-mails, but after that, no problems.
Huh. /f
every 2 weeks at startup, and defrag every 3 weeks.
I guess I'm doing it wrong.
I started with 2 partitions, FAT32 & NTFS, installed Win2k Pro, then patched it up.
Installed Tiny Personal Firewall v2.0.15, Firefox (with adblock, firenes, and IEview plugins), SpyBot, irfanview, media player classic, WinAmp 2.95, RealVNC server 4.0, adobe 5 (this was before Foxit 3 came out), their HP all-in-one printer software, DivX, Xvid & various other codec packs, Audacity (my dads a musician), open office (my moms a writer), Shockwave, Mozilla Thunderbird, Juno (my moms been using it since it was free dial-up, she likes the interface), winzip, Winrar, 7z, notepad++, JAVA, AVG, Picasa (when it came out), and thats essentially it.
Then, a script to rar the "my documents" folder to the 1st partition at bootup once a week, incrementing rar filename each time; chkdsk
Disable all phone-home software, including windows update; to be safe, several domains are pointed to localhost in the HOSTS file. remove all IE & OE icons, put shortcuts for everything they are likely to need in the alluser profile. Select registry changes to turn off some of the more obnoxious windows stuff.
After installing all this and making sure everything plays well with each other, I then ghosted the 2nd partion to a compressed image on the 1st.
They have 2 emergency CD's; the first blows away the NTFS partition, then recreates it from the image on the 1st partition
The 2nd is KNOPPIX; if they can't get ahold of me or think that I need to look at things before they use the other emergency CD. I also encourage them to just play around with it.
This has worked perfectly for the last 3+ years; if they get suspicious about something, I just come in through VNC viewer and take a look; probably every day for the first 2 weeks, then maybe once a week, now maybe once a month, if that. TPF turned on to paranoid mode doesn't let anything get in or get installed without a pop-up telling you about it. I go ahead and update & run SpyBot whenever I come in for a peek (BTW, one of the recent SPyBot updates has started really screwing with the registry; it's optimized for XP and just causes Win2k's registry to expand); I usually update the virus definitions at the same time, and delete some of the older "My Documents" backups.
They've usedthe emergency restore CD once, about 2 years ago; I need to update the image on my next visit.
I'm not certain, but I think that just might be crazy enough to work!
Speaking generally, though, I can see a few esoteric possibilities, but nothing that could do as much as claimed.
Your main power usage is at 2 points; the display, and the antenna. you can do some amazing things with the display, like making a low power digital paper display for normal ops and leaving your relatively power hungry LCD off until you need something the paper can't handle.
There is quite a bit of wastage across the EM spectrum you could minimize; I could see using optical circuitry where possible, and I've yet to see a cell phone that has a truly efficient IM setup; if it produces a signal that can be detected outside of the phone, or any part produces heat, you are wasting power.
I was trying to add some formula for devising maximum theoretical antenna performance, but the filter defeated me.
For once, something that I'm actually qualified to post on!
I was a Weapons system depot level tech in the navy, doing lots of work with waveguides, radar, etc. I went on to work in the private sector, doing among other things antenna design at Nortel.
I can't help but say this is a bunch of shit. It is ALWAYS more energy-expensive to do wireless, it's just the way things are.
If it is just the journalist making a mistake, I can see some possible advances in energy conservation using a waveguide, or even a virtual waveguide; anything else would only start to be possible if you enter the realm of high energy physics.
Unless this guy's name is Tesla, and/or they have developed a completely new principle...
You have a win2k system that is bluescreening? seriously? Patched to at least sp4?
faulty/incompatible hardware is the most likely explanation; It would be nice if that sort of thing just popped up a warning message, but it is Microsoft, after all.
Hey, at least the servers are running Win2k; if you HAVE to have a rock steady microsoft operating system, Win2k is without a doubt your best choice.
Unless you have an old copy of XENIX laying around, of course. or OS/2 1.3
If I had mod points....
Did anyone ever start up the "buy 'em a beer" website I've often thought about starting? if so, let me know your account number.
It simply is not fair to be a Mac user and not fit into any of the stereotypes.
You gave me absolutely nothing to make fun of you with in your post.
Has a ring of truth to it. after all, GWBASIC was a lot like playing D&D.
If the standard SCSI drives were available in the same sizes as are SATA drives, I would probably say go with RAID 6; you don't have to worry about an additional drive failing while you are rebuilding (it happened to me. once. Nightmare.).
By the way, I haven't done the 3x1TB SATA array, but I have done a 4x500gb one; rebuild time was 6 hours, without load. With load... well, thats the reason I suggested dual 3TB arrays; throw DFS/VFS on them, and when you have to rebuild, remove the one with the problem from the network. a Mirror set of arrays.
But, honestly, I know squat about SAS; it's obviously something I'm going to have learn about, it sounds interesting as hell.
Luckily, no one has asked me any questions about it yet...
I've never had any problems (or seen any real problems) with software RAID 5, all the way back to NT; I've read & seen load of problems with hardware raid.
Kinda makes me wonder why anyone bothers. sure, it's a little more CPU intensive. so?
it's kind of crazy, anyway.
I have a lot of digital media I keep backed up, plus source code, records. all told maybe 150gb.
but, guess what? follow these simple steps:
go to pricewatch. order a cheap barebones system, $150.
Order 3 1TB SATA drives, and a 80gb drive, $300
Install debian on the 80gb drive. make the 3 1TB drives into a 2TB software RAID 5 array.
Hook into the network, in your garage preferably.
Tadaa! 2 terrabyte of storage, costing $450, that will last you for years and years.
note: dust it occasionally. I would also suggest using wake on LAN to keep your power bills low, unless you live in a place where there are temperature extremes that might effect it.
But seriously, folks..
I've been using CD's for critical information backup for over a decade; when I got my first single speed burner, writable CD's were huge, heavy, and apparently near indestructible; the only protection mine have enjoyed since 1994 is that I keep them in a briefcase.
When the media started getting thin & flimsy, around '99, I switched to "black" media; once again, no problems at all.
It's getting harder to find the blacks lately, so I've started doing, I guess you would say "environment stress testing" on DVD rewritable media; they seem to be the toughest thing available.
BUT. for day to day operations? RAID-5. It's a no-brainer. I've got a client I setup with a software SCSI RAID-5 for their day-to-day storage back in 2000, 3 35gb drives originally, they added one in 2000, 2 more in 2001; I then switched them over to one built on 3 73gb drives; that lasted until early 2007, when they went to a 4x146gb array; in retrospect they probably should have waited a year, but oh well. Please note that the original 175gb array and the subsequent 365gb array are still in use in different departments with lesser needs. when they hit 730gb with the current array, I might suggest that they think about doing a pair of Debian soft SATA 4 disk arrays to save money; you can put together a 3TB 4 disk SATA array tomorrow for $328, while SCSI is apparently, suddenly, inexplicably, dead. can't quite figure that out.
yes..
But, they have to climb the wall, get past the guard dogs, fool the electronic entry system, climb through the ductwork, fool the motion sensors, crack the safe, then manage to get off the premises alive before the response team gets there, and even THEN they will have problems defeating the ROT13 encryption my backed up savegames are protected with.
I take PBEM games Very Seriously.
This also throws several fairly mainstream websites into the call with Chester the Molester. Take for example Renderosity.com; there are probably 10,000+ images on there which are obviously intended to depict someone who is under 18 either nude or in a sexual circumstance.
I can close Firefox and open any 3 of the many CGI programs available to me and generate a pornographic image of a minor in less than 5 minutes. Let me take an hour on it, and I can generate one that will be indistinguishable from an actual photograph.
SO..where does it become illegal in this Brave New World? when I show the image to a third party?
When I finish creating it?
When it is "in the works" and obviously CGI?
When I lay out the primitives and do a wiremode?
When I open the software with the intention of creating the image?
When I form the thought that this is what I'm going to do?
Or maybe the Graphics tools themselves are illegal, since they are what makes it possible for me to potentially create a CGI rendition of Child Pornography?