Yeah, right now I can go through my AM dial and hear all those "liberal" media outlets.
I agree! This "liberal bias" stuff is hokum.
Or pick up all those "liberal" newspapers,
The NYT, the W. Post, the LA Times, the Phila. Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald -- all of 'em are fucking John Birchers! I'm sick of their conservative crap. They should shut up and give someone else a voice!
or listen to the "liberal" clearchannel owned stations,
You already talked about radio. You did leave out that bastion of conservatism which is NPR.
and of course FOX news is as "liberal" as it gets....
I'm so sick of TV - all the conservatives make me sick -- it's just one after another: Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, the CNN crowd, 60 Minutes, 20/20, Barbwa Walters, the morning hosts like Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel...fire breathing conservatives, all of 'em! Where's the balance?!?
Don't even get me started on Hollywood -- They're all sucking Reagan's cock still: Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Ed Harris, Babs Streisand, Spielberg, Janeane Garafolo, Paul Newman, Martin Sheen, blah, blah, blah. Remember when Elia Kazan was up for a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars a few years ago -- heck, nearly ten people in the audience stood up to applaud, and I bet that nearly all of them were Republicans who cheered when he ratted on the communists in Hollywood in the fifties.
Fucking conservatives -- they run everything. We'll get our chance someday, though. Until then, blow up your TV!
3. A system for claiming property needs to be put in place. A Solar System "Recorder of Deeds" office if you will. There should be some sort of a homestead requirement, whereby any claimed property has to have an active presence maintained and the claim must be renewed from time to time by either present use or revisiting. Conservation claims sould be made but would have to be renewed from time to time by payment of a not insignificant fee. This would encourage review of whether conservation is really the highest and best use of a parcel.
Just to elaborate a point here -- everyone would pay registration and continuing reservation fees, not just conservation claims. in addition, I think that this could be a good source of funding for the pure science research that commerical exploration might ignore. Instead of ditching Hubble (or a future analogous item) because of lack of funds, this sort of funding would permit greater noncommercial activity as commercial activity expands.
Of course, things like security would become issues: as space-based culture becomes more and more self-sufficient, I can envision a day when there will be piracy, claim-jumping, search and rescue missions, border conflicts, etc. Security and law/order type personnel will be needed, and the claim registration tax might be a good way to do it. Plus, there will be a huge problem keeping on Earth when explorers from space return after having been bombarded with cosmic rays and thereby gaining super powers.
The claim system creates an artificial distinction between man-made solar satellites and natural ones, though. An asteroid right next to a station built from ore from an asteroid would be completely separate. That seems like it would cause economic distortions.
It seems wasteful to convert (via mining) a natural asteroid into an artificial one just to avoid taxes/claim fees, and surely that would happen. A few years of mining and building (with future technology) could potentially do that to tiny asteroids. Better to spend the effort on other areas than to turn A into B with no net benefit other than tax avoidance.
...private property would be good for space. The treaties that declare that celestial objects are the common property of humanity and cannot be owned by nations or people is, IMHO, stupid. It significantly undercuts a major incentive to develop commercially reasonable space-based technologies.
Here are some of my thoughts on the issue, fow whatever they are worth (probably about as much as that guy's claim on the asteroid):
1. On the most basic level, I point out that the Tragedy of the Commons (Garrett Hardin) arises because of a lack of private ownership. Perhaps there are other ways of solving that problem, but none has worked as well as private property for as long and as stable a period. Furthermore, private property does not forbid conservation -- it simply makes it a competing use.
2. On the disincentive issue, why would anyone go into space if you can't make money at it? Pure research is one reason, but it hasn't proved to be very effective in keeping the public's interest or getting space explored and used for the benefit of humanity.
If celestial objects are not able to be private property, then a myriad of plans (such as putting solar panels on the moon and beaming energy to earth) are economically unfeasible -- the moon could not be used as a source of materials to build the solar panels and other associated materials (which I understand was part of the plan). Likewise, the plant itself would be squatting illegally (either that or someone with a grievance could drop a rock on it without suffering punishment, since the builder would have no valid claim on the plant in the first place). Admittedly, orbital tourism might be possible still, but forget having a Marriott on the moon. Do we really want it to be a violation of international law to use an ice ball in space for propulsive material for exploration missions to the outer solar system or to use martian ice as fuel to return a mission from Mars?
3. A system for claiming property needs to be put in place. A Solar System "Recorder of Deeds" office if you will. There should be some sort of a homestead requirement, whereby any claimed property has to have an active presence maintained and the claim must be renewed from time to time by either present use or revisiting. Conservation claims sould be made but would have to be renewed from time to time by payment of a not insignificant fee. This would encourage review of whether conservation is really the highest and best use of a parcel.
Slashdot has an interesting blend of politics and ideas floating around it. Support the moon-based solar plant. Support the X-prize. Shit on private property rights in space. Sometimes, I just don't understand the general consensus around here. It doesn't surprise me, but I still don't understand it.
"Not huge"? How about "tiny"? My home directory is larger than your whole RAID "server".
Oooooooh. My home directory is bigger than yours! That is certainly nice to know. Perhaps we have different needs?
Try 1000 GB for anything resembling an enterprise solution.
I never said that our firm is an "enterprise" with "enterprise" needs. We are a small office. We have small office needs, but we wanted reliability on a budget. I thought that was pretty clear.
Even on a personal level I wouldn't settle for anything less than a couple 120 GB drives in RAID 1.
Then post your own proposal. FWIW, the server was bought a couple of years ago when the IDE alernatives were 40 GB and IDE RAID sucked (still is sketchy, IMHO).
So please recalculate the costs and try again.
No. If your needs differ from mine, fine. YMMV. All I posted about was what we did under our circumstances, which I mentioned. Our office is a small office. To elaborate on that, let me mention that we basically store only word processor and spreadsheet files on the server. 27 GB (minus OS files) does an awful lot of that. We haven't come close to filling it yet.
Sorry that you are offended that we are a weenie sized company with basic needs. If we were huge, we'd get a beaucoup server. As it is, we built for our expected needs, not to impress/. readers.
Well, duh. The US had a lot of support after 9/11. "We are all Americans." But the ill-feelings have increased tremendously in the last year or so. That is indisputable.
** Warning -- long rant coming **
Honestly, I've had the shits of Europe (and the honorary european country called Canada) and Japan. I don't care what they think, and I think that's what bugs them about the US so much right now.
I remember how the Europeans cried when Reagan put missles in western Europe in the early eighties. There were massive demonstrations in Europe at the time. Funny how those people didn't think to burn american flags eight years later when the Berlin Wall came down. Whether you agree or not, I see a direct connection between the military pressure put on the CCCP by Reagan and the collapse of that empire.
I think that Europe and Canada will bitch for the next decade about the direction that the US is headed in, and when Bush's goals are accomplished, they will turn around and say he had nothing to do with it. Japan will keep its fucking mouth shut as long as N. Korea keeps putting ants in the Nippon pants. The presetn scenario there and in Iraq reminds me so much of teh early Reagan years that it is really uncanny. It took until Bush I for the Reagan doctrine to truly bear fruit. Wait ten years from today to see whether Bush II's ideas bear fruit.
The Bush adminsitration is a plow horse. It goes in a straight line exactly where it is pointed. It will take some time to get there, but it is essentially inevitable that it will reach its goal, Mr. Anderson.
I will address two areas -- Iraq (first) and then the general goals that the Bush adminstration has and the accomplishments to date. Hopefully what will emerge is a pattern -- Bush says he will do something and it happens. Not without problems or hiccups or dead sons and daughters, but the things he says he's going to do, he does. It's really remarkable.
IRAQ: There is a plan here, despite the fact that nobody wants to see it. It is not a short-term plan and it will not be easy, but here is what is going to happen:
1. US stabilizes Iraq by killing Saddam's supporters and the militant elements that are going there on a daily basis to fight the jihad. 2. US pushes other arab states to adopt open government with protections of basic human rights and voting privileges. 3. US kicks Israel in the ass and throws out Arafat and makes Palestine into two countries so the Palestinian problem is ameliorated (it will never be "solved"). 4. Iraq becomes a stable and prosperous example to arab world on what freedom can do in an arab context.
The plan has a number of things going for it: 1. Iraq is relatively secular 2. Iraq has lots of wealthy expatriates in western countries 3. Iraq is less attached to Palestine so those issues ("Israel" can't be used against the US as much) 4. Iraq has a relatively educated population 5. Iraq was utterly and totally brutalized by Saddam, so people really aren't that upset that the US went in there (unless you're French or Russian and lost your contracts). "Love" would be too strong a word, but "thankful" is probably not inappropriate, given what I've heard.
I may be wrong about my prognosis, but I think that the plan I described is more or less what the Bush administration is trying to follow. The speech Bush made in (I think) late February basically laid this out.
OTHER ACTION ITEMS: The last thing that you need to understand about Bush is that he is a compulsive truth-teller. I don't believe that there is a dishonest or sneaky bone in the man's body. As near as I can tell, he tells you what he's going to do and he does it, whether you like it or not. I think the problem Europe and Japan have is the "like it or not" part, since their oxen were gored by the Iraq war.
Anyway, here's the agenda:
-cut taxes (check) -ban partial birth abortion (check) -kick Saddam's ass (check) (note: the WMD thing is really irrelevant.
I agree, that seemed much more like, "Watch us build an expensive PC with a lot of hard disks" than "Watch us build something useful for reliable network storage."
My solution to building a cheap storage system was the following:
1. Buy old Netfinity 5000 on eBay. 2. Order 5 x 9GB SCSI drives from my trusty IBM parts guy (csaunders at itexchange.com)for $70 each. 3. Order basic RAID card for said box. 4. Install RedHat 7.1 from a CD in a book under my couch. 5. Install SAMBA 6. Run cron job to back up user data and relevant config files to an external USB hard drive attached to a windows box on the lan. 7. Take external hard drive to safe deposit box weekly. Get second USB drive out of safe deposit box and attach it to windows box at office to await next update. FWIW, I've been thinking about putting the USB drive that is in the office in a safe when the back up is not taking place. This is not for fear of fire or catastrophe -- I just don't want it to walk out the door. 8. The Netfinity server has the RAID 5 array configured for a hot spare drive so that there is failover operation if a drive quits. 9. Installed PowerChute software with a UPS to shutdown the box gracefully if power quits.
External USB -- $100 each (2) = $200 (got enclosures and cheap-o spare IDE hard drives from scavenged boxen) SCSI Drives -- $70 each (5) = $350 Netfinity box = $300 UPS = $200 (I think) Redhat 7.1 on CD in book under sofa = priceless
Total: $1,050.
Project results: RAID-5 with regular offsite storage. Logical disk size is only 27 GB, but you can fatten this by using bigger SCSI drives. I didn't need mondo storage, so I saw no need to go with 36 GB drives, though you certainly could if you had more money.
I am currently trying to put together a RAID 5 file server and they do not cover any topic of use to me in that article. For example, practical backup solution?
External USB drives worked for me. Depends on how heavy-duty you need and how your office works. Perhaps simply connecting up two servers in different offices and doing mutual backups nightly for changed files might suffice. DVDs and CDs are an option, and tape is still useful.
Also, aside from their DVD backups, they seem to have no data recovery plan in case a hard drive fails. I guess they aren't storing anything important on these drives?
My data recovery plan (if everything pukes) is to buy a new chassis and drives and reinstall RH 7.1., connect it to the lan, and download old config files and user data. I think it would take a couple of days (mostly waiting on delivery of the drives and box). That time could be slashed if I were truly paranoid if I simply kept spare parts off-site. I'm just not that worried, however.
FWIW, our office is a small lawyer's office with about 10 people on our LAN. The data we need to store is not huge.
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year.
This brings to mind the old "cat and rat farm" idea my grandfather talked about. We never knew how to make the profit selling the cat skins, but now there is hope for this idea again:
1. Raise cats and rats. 2. Feed rats to the cats. 3. Feed dead cats to the rats. 4. Keep the cat skins. 5. Use the cat skins to make oil. 6. Profit!!!
A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles.
Next thing you know, they'll be saying that it takes hundreds of tons of hydrogen to fuse to allow a solar powered car to drive a mile. How wasteful!
Patriotism is dying in the name of your country. Nationalism is killing in the name of its government.
YOur attempt to explain the distinction between patriotism and nationalism is a nice idea, but one which is poorly executed. It's esentially sound-bite leftist jingo-ism. That's just as bad as the same coming from the right.
For instance, I consider Ben Franklin to have been a patriot of the first order. He didn't die for his country. No argument on the latter portion of your sig, but the first part doesn't bear scrutiny. It oversimplifies patriotism and turns it into martyrdom, which it isn't.
Interestingly, TMI (or at least the unit that did not melt down) recently set a record for longest continual operation of a pressurized water reactor (there are approximately 200 of these world-wide).
My really, really important stuff is stored in a safe deposit box at a local bank. I have digital copies of treasured family photos. I will be adding DVDs converted from video tapes shortly. The plan is to keep original media relatively safe in the house, but to maintain an offsite archive in case anything happens to the house.
Music CDs, movies, games, etc., really don't matter and can be insured in any case. I'm not torqued up about my kid gnawing on Tomb Raider or anything. I'm worried about stuff that I can't replace.
Safe deposit boxes are unbelievably cheap. There's no reason not to rent one.
Media issues have been addressed elsewhere in this topic, so I won't mention them other than to say CD and DVD are not forever. Maybe a big old hard drive might not be a bad idea. I think WD just spit out a 300 GB model. Put a couple of those into enclosures with USB, and you may be set for a while -- do DVD & CD in the short term and put it onto the hard drives every year or so.
1. They like expensive things 2. The iPod costs more than its weight in gold 3. Audiophiles are too stupid to realize that there are other products out there that are just as cool but half the price 4. Audiophiles are stupid fetishists and iPods are their version of vinyl-covered Carrie-Anne Moss tits 5. Did I mention that audiophiles have more money than brains?
A dial-up without the extra features (just the web, baby) costs nothing per month, and per-minute charges are less than $2 per hour during peak hours (less than $1 off-peak).
I don't have any per minute charges for land-line telephone service, and a POTS line is about $20 for residential use. Let's see:
US: $10 for ISP $20 for POTS ------------ $30.00
Sweden: $3 for ISP $30 for 20 hours of on-line time per month (half at $1/hour, half at $2/hour = $1.50 average * 20 = $30)
Total: $33.00.
w00t! Sweden is soooo much more elite than the US. Blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah, blah, blah, pickeled herring, blah, blah, blah.
Normally, I'm all for plaintiffs. After all, I'm a plaintiffs' attorney. But this smacks of idiocy. I bet it gets tossed on summary judgment. I'd ask for Rule 11 (or Rule 11-type if an analogous state court rule exists since this is in state court) sanctions as well if I were defense counsel. Jesus H. Christ on a fucking crutch.
I just called the Senator theater (in Towson). Here's the deal:
Tickets for the trilogy are $35. They go on sale Saturday the 11th at noon. No more than 10 tickets may be purchased at once. The trilogy will be shown back-to-back-to-back on December 16th (Tuesday) starting at noon. The Senator theater is at www.senator.com or 410-435-8338.
Sorry for the repeats of others' picks, but you wanted my advice, and here it is:
AVG Antivirus - free for home users with free updates
OpenOffice.org 1.1 (office suite)
Irfan (for image viewing)
Mozilla - tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and email filtering
Pegasus Mail (an alternative email client if you hate Mozilla's)
Winamp for audio playing (I prefer the 2.x versions)
CDex (for making MP3 files from CD)
MAME (for playing old arcade games)
Nero (for burning CDs)
Qcast media player (lets my PS2 read video, photo, and MP3 files from my computer so that it can display same on my TV rig)
Other tools that I use extensively, but which are not necessarily "home user" applications are:
Putty (for ssh connections to servers)
WS-FTP (ftp - free for non-commercial use)
VNC (lets me take control of other machines remotely using the GUI, also lets me control my home machine remotely the same way)
As far as entertainment titles go, it really depends on your preferences, but mine are:
Baldur's Gate I/II
Neverwinter Nights (tons of free modules extend the playability tremendously)
Civil War Generals II (very, very cheap and it's a neat (American) Civil War game, also lets you create scenarios to play. The stuff they give you is really easy to beat, though. I'd like to see a third edition of this title.)
Slashdot Mirror
Frankly bush is an idiot to do anythign he has to surround himself with somewhat intelligent people to figure things out.
What was your SAT score?
GF.
Yeah, right now I can go through my AM dial and hear all those "liberal" media outlets.
I agree! This "liberal bias" stuff is hokum.
Or pick up all those "liberal" newspapers,
The NYT, the W. Post, the LA Times, the Phila. Inquirer, the Baltimore Sun, the Miami Herald -- all of 'em are fucking John Birchers! I'm sick of their conservative crap. They should shut up and give someone else a voice!
or listen to the "liberal" clearchannel owned stations,
You already talked about radio. You did leave out that bastion of conservatism which is NPR.
and of course FOX news is as "liberal" as it gets....
I'm so sick of TV - all the conservatives make me sick -- it's just one after another: Bill Moyers, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, the CNN crowd, 60 Minutes, 20/20, Barbwa Walters, the morning hosts like Katie Couric, Bryant Gumbel...fire breathing conservatives, all of 'em! Where's the balance?!?
Don't even get me started on Hollywood -- They're all sucking Reagan's cock still: Susan Sarandon, Tim Robbins, Ed Harris, Babs Streisand, Spielberg, Janeane Garafolo, Paul Newman, Martin Sheen, blah, blah, blah. Remember when Elia Kazan was up for a lifetime achievement award at the Oscars a few years ago -- heck, nearly ten people in the audience stood up to applaud, and I bet that nearly all of them were Republicans who cheered when he ratted on the communists in Hollywood in the fifties.
Fucking conservatives -- they run everything. We'll get our chance someday, though. Until then, blow up your TV!
GF.
3. A system for claiming property needs to be put in place. A Solar System "Recorder of Deeds" office if you will. There should be some sort of a homestead requirement, whereby any claimed property has to have an active presence maintained and the claim must be renewed from time to time by either present use or revisiting. Conservation claims sould be made but would have to be renewed from time to time by payment of a not insignificant fee. This would encourage review of whether conservation is really the highest and best use of a parcel.
Just to elaborate a point here -- everyone would pay registration and continuing reservation fees, not just conservation claims. in addition, I think that this could be a good source of funding for the pure science research that commerical exploration might ignore. Instead of ditching Hubble (or a future analogous item) because of lack of funds, this sort of funding would permit greater noncommercial activity as commercial activity expands.
Of course, things like security would become issues: as space-based culture becomes more and more self-sufficient, I can envision a day when there will be piracy, claim-jumping, search and rescue missions, border conflicts, etc. Security and law/order type personnel will be needed, and the claim registration tax might be a good way to do it. Plus, there will be a huge problem keeping on Earth when explorers from space return after having been bombarded with cosmic rays and thereby gaining super powers.
The claim system creates an artificial distinction between man-made solar satellites and natural ones, though. An asteroid right next to a station built from ore from an asteroid would be completely separate. That seems like it would cause economic distortions.
It seems wasteful to convert (via mining) a natural asteroid into an artificial one just to avoid taxes/claim fees, and surely that would happen. A few years of mining and building (with future technology) could potentially do that to tiny asteroids. Better to spend the effort on other areas than to turn A into B with no net benefit other than tax avoidance.
...private property would be good for space. The treaties that declare that celestial objects are the common property of humanity and cannot be owned by nations or people is, IMHO, stupid. It significantly undercuts a major incentive to develop commercially reasonable space-based technologies.
Here are some of my thoughts on the issue, fow whatever they are worth (probably about as much as that guy's claim on the asteroid):
1. On the most basic level, I point out that the Tragedy of the Commons (Garrett Hardin) arises because of a lack of private ownership. Perhaps there are other ways of solving that problem, but none has worked as well as private property for as long and as stable a period. Furthermore, private property does not forbid conservation -- it simply makes it a competing use.
2. On the disincentive issue, why would anyone go into space if you can't make money at it? Pure research is one reason, but it hasn't proved to be very effective in keeping the public's interest or getting space explored and used for the benefit of humanity.
If celestial objects are not able to be private property, then a myriad of plans (such as putting solar panels on the moon and beaming energy to earth) are economically unfeasible -- the moon could not be used as a source of materials to build the solar panels and other associated materials (which I understand was part of the plan). Likewise, the plant itself would be squatting illegally (either that or someone with a grievance could drop a rock on it without suffering punishment, since the builder would have no valid claim on the plant in the first place). Admittedly, orbital tourism might be possible still, but forget having a Marriott on the moon. Do we really want it to be a violation of international law to use an ice ball in space for propulsive material for exploration missions to the outer solar system or to use martian ice as fuel to return a mission from Mars?
3. A system for claiming property needs to be put in place. A Solar System "Recorder of Deeds" office if you will. There should be some sort of a homestead requirement, whereby any claimed property has to have an active presence maintained and the claim must be renewed from time to time by either present use or revisiting. Conservation claims sould be made but would have to be renewed from time to time by payment of a not insignificant fee. This would encourage review of whether conservation is really the highest and best use of a parcel.
Slashdot has an interesting blend of politics and ideas floating around it. Support the moon-based solar plant. Support the X-prize. Shit on private property rights in space. Sometimes, I just don't understand the general consensus around here. It doesn't surprise me, but I still don't understand it.
GF.
"Not huge"? How about "tiny"? My home directory is larger than your whole RAID "server".
/. readers.
Oooooooh. My home directory is bigger than yours! That is certainly nice to know. Perhaps we have different needs?
Try 1000 GB for anything resembling an enterprise solution.
I never said that our firm is an "enterprise" with "enterprise" needs. We are a small office. We have small office needs, but we wanted reliability on a budget. I thought that was pretty clear.
Even on a personal level I wouldn't settle for anything less than a couple 120 GB drives in RAID 1.
Then post your own proposal. FWIW, the server was bought a couple of years ago when the IDE alernatives were 40 GB and IDE RAID sucked (still is sketchy, IMHO).
So please recalculate the costs and try again.
No. If your needs differ from mine, fine. YMMV. All I posted about was what we did under our circumstances, which I mentioned. Our office is a small office. To elaborate on that, let me mention that we basically store only word processor and spreadsheet files on the server. 27 GB (minus OS files) does an awful lot of that. We haven't come close to filling it yet.
Sorry that you are offended that we are a weenie sized company with basic needs. If we were huge, we'd get a beaucoup server. As it is, we built for our expected needs, not to impress
GF.
Well, duh. The US had a lot of support after 9/11. "We are all Americans." But the ill-feelings have increased tremendously in the last year or so. That is indisputable.
** Warning -- long rant coming **
Honestly, I've had the shits of Europe (and the honorary european country called Canada) and Japan. I don't care what they think, and I think that's what bugs them about the US so much right now.
I remember how the Europeans cried when Reagan put missles in western Europe in the early eighties. There were massive demonstrations in Europe at the time. Funny how those people didn't think to burn american flags eight years later when the Berlin Wall came down. Whether you agree or not, I see a direct connection between the military pressure put on the CCCP by Reagan and the collapse of that empire.
I think that Europe and Canada will bitch for the next decade about the direction that the US is headed in, and when Bush's goals are accomplished, they will turn around and say he had nothing to do with it. Japan will keep its fucking mouth shut as long as N. Korea keeps putting ants in the Nippon pants. The presetn scenario there and in Iraq reminds me so much of teh early Reagan years that it is really uncanny. It took until Bush I for the Reagan doctrine to truly bear fruit. Wait ten years from today to see whether Bush II's ideas bear fruit.
The Bush adminsitration is a plow horse. It goes in a straight line exactly where it is pointed. It will take some time to get there, but it is essentially inevitable that it will reach its goal, Mr. Anderson.
I will address two areas -- Iraq (first) and then the general goals that the Bush adminstration has and the accomplishments to date. Hopefully what will emerge is a pattern -- Bush says he will do something and it happens. Not without problems or hiccups or dead sons and daughters, but the things he says he's going to do, he does. It's really remarkable.
IRAQ:
There is a plan here, despite the fact that nobody wants to see it. It is not a short-term plan and it will not be easy, but here is what is going to happen:
1. US stabilizes Iraq by killing Saddam's supporters and the militant elements that are going there on a daily basis to fight the jihad.
2. US pushes other arab states to adopt open government with protections of basic human rights and voting privileges.
3. US kicks Israel in the ass and throws out Arafat and makes Palestine into two countries so the Palestinian problem is ameliorated (it will never be "solved").
4. Iraq becomes a stable and prosperous example to arab world on what freedom can do in an arab context.
The plan has a number of things going for it:
1. Iraq is relatively secular
2. Iraq has lots of wealthy expatriates in western countries
3. Iraq is less attached to Palestine so those issues ("Israel" can't be used against the US as much)
4. Iraq has a relatively educated population
5. Iraq was utterly and totally brutalized by Saddam, so people really aren't that upset that the US went in there (unless you're French or Russian and lost your contracts). "Love" would be too strong a word, but "thankful" is probably not inappropriate, given what I've heard.
I may be wrong about my prognosis, but I think that the plan I described is more or less what the Bush administration is trying to follow. The speech Bush made in (I think) late February basically laid this out.
OTHER ACTION ITEMS:
The last thing that you need to understand about Bush is that he is a compulsive truth-teller. I don't believe that there is a dishonest or sneaky bone in the man's body. As near as I can tell, he tells you what he's going to do and he does it, whether you like it or not. I think the problem Europe and Japan have is the "like it or not" part, since their oxen were gored by the Iraq war.
Anyway, here's the agenda:
-cut taxes (check)
-ban partial birth abortion (check)
-kick Saddam's ass (check) (note: the WMD thing is really irrelevant.
I agree, that seemed much more like, "Watch us build an expensive PC with a lot of hard disks" than "Watch us build something useful for reliable network storage."
My solution to building a cheap storage system was the following:
1. Buy old Netfinity 5000 on eBay.
2. Order 5 x 9GB SCSI drives from my trusty IBM parts guy (csaunders at itexchange.com)for $70 each.
3. Order basic RAID card for said box.
4. Install RedHat 7.1 from a CD in a book under my couch.
5. Install SAMBA
6. Run cron job to back up user data and relevant config files to an external USB hard drive attached to a windows box on the lan.
7. Take external hard drive to safe deposit box weekly. Get second USB drive out of safe deposit box and attach it to windows box at office to await next update. FWIW, I've been thinking about putting the USB drive that is in the office in a safe when the back up is not taking place. This is not for fear of fire or catastrophe -- I just don't want it to walk out the door.
8. The Netfinity server has the RAID 5 array configured for a hot spare drive so that there is failover operation if a drive quits.
9. Installed PowerChute software with a UPS to shutdown the box gracefully if power quits.
External USB -- $100 each (2) = $200 (got enclosures and cheap-o spare IDE hard drives from scavenged boxen)
SCSI Drives -- $70 each (5) = $350
Netfinity box = $300
UPS = $200 (I think)
Redhat 7.1 on CD in book under sofa = priceless
Total: $1,050.
Project results:
RAID-5 with regular offsite storage. Logical disk size is only 27 GB, but you can fatten this by using bigger SCSI drives. I didn't need mondo storage, so I saw no need to go with 36 GB drives, though you certainly could if you had more money.
I am currently trying to put together a RAID 5 file server and they do not cover any topic of use to me in that article. For example, practical backup solution?
External USB drives worked for me. Depends on how heavy-duty you need and how your office works. Perhaps simply connecting up two servers in different offices and doing mutual backups nightly for changed files might suffice. DVDs and CDs are an option, and tape is still useful.
Also, aside from their DVD backups, they seem to have no data recovery plan in case a hard drive fails. I guess they aren't storing anything important on these drives?
My data recovery plan (if everything pukes) is to buy a new chassis and drives and reinstall RH 7.1., connect it to the lan, and download old config files and user data. I think it would take a couple of days (mostly waiting on delivery of the drives and box). That time could be slashed if I were truly paranoid if I simply kept spare parts off-site. I'm just not that worried, however.
FWIW, our office is a small lawyer's office with about 10 people on our LAN. The data we need to store is not huge.
GF.
Technological savvy could turn 600 million tons of turkey guts and other waste into 4 billion barrels of light Texas crude each year.
This brings to mind the old "cat and rat farm" idea my grandfather talked about. We never knew how to make the profit selling the cat skins, but now there is hope for this idea again:
1. Raise cats and rats.
2. Feed rats to the cats.
3. Feed dead cats to the rats.
4. Keep the cat skins.
5. Use the cat skins to make oil.
6. Profit!!!
GF.
A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles.
Next thing you know, they'll be saying that it takes hundreds of tons of hydrogen to fuse to allow a solar powered car to drive a mile. How wasteful!
GF.
Our budgeted amount for cheesy historical romances could get slashed! w00t!
GF.
"Patriotism is giving your life for you[r] country."
I like that better.
Patriotism is dying in the name of your country. Nationalism is killing in the name of its government.
YOur attempt to explain the distinction between patriotism and nationalism is a nice idea, but one which is poorly executed. It's esentially sound-bite leftist jingo-ism. That's just as bad as the same coming from the right.
For instance, I consider Ben Franklin to have been a patriot of the first order. He didn't die for his country. No argument on the latter portion of your sig, but the first part doesn't bear scrutiny. It oversimplifies patriotism and turns it into martyrdom, which it isn't.
GF.
Not a huge, Three Mile Island-type power plant
Interestingly, TMI (or at least the unit that did not melt down) recently set a record for longest continual operation of a pressurized water reactor (there are approximately 200 of these world-wide).
GF.
My really, really important stuff is stored in a safe deposit box at a local bank. I have digital copies of treasured family photos. I will be adding DVDs converted from video tapes shortly. The plan is to keep original media relatively safe in the house, but to maintain an offsite archive in case anything happens to the house.
Music CDs, movies, games, etc., really don't matter and can be insured in any case. I'm not torqued up about my kid gnawing on Tomb Raider or anything. I'm worried about stuff that I can't replace.
Safe deposit boxes are unbelievably cheap. There's no reason not to rent one.
Media issues have been addressed elsewhere in this topic, so I won't mention them other than to say CD and DVD are not forever. Maybe a big old hard drive might not be a bad idea. I think WD just spit out a 300 GB model. Put a couple of those into enclosures with USB, and you may be set for a while -- do DVD & CD in the short term and put it onto the hard drives every year or so.
GF.
Lots.
Audiophiles like the iPod because:
1. They like expensive things
2. The iPod costs more than its weight in gold
3. Audiophiles are too stupid to realize that there are other products out there that are just as cool but half the price
4. Audiophiles are stupid fetishists and iPods are their version of vinyl-covered Carrie-Anne Moss tits
5. Did I mention that audiophiles have more money than brains?
GF.
A dial-up without the extra features (just the web, baby) costs nothing per month, and per-minute charges are less than $2 per hour during peak hours (less than $1 off-peak).
I don't have any per minute charges for land-line telephone service, and a POTS line is about $20 for residential use. Let's see:
US:
$10 for ISP
$20 for POTS
------------
$30.00
Sweden:
$3 for ISP
$30 for 20 hours of on-line time per month (half at $1/hour, half at $2/hour = $1.50 average * 20 = $30)
Total: $33.00.
w00t! Sweden is soooo much more elite than the US. Blah, blah, blah, George Bush, blah, blah, blah, pickeled herring, blah, blah, blah.
GF.
- LINUX BEATS OFF THE INCUMBENTS
That would make anyone smile...
GF.
Normally, I'm all for plaintiffs. After all, I'm a plaintiffs' attorney. But this smacks of idiocy. I bet it gets tossed on summary judgment. I'd ask for Rule 11 (or Rule 11-type if an analogous state court rule exists since this is in state court) sanctions as well if I were defense counsel. Jesus H. Christ on a fucking crutch.
GF.
Another utility I use is Freezip (not Freezip!). See here:
http://freezip.cjb.net/
Nifty for Windows.
GF.
The ballpark seems to be $35.00 USD.
GF.
Or this solution.
GF.
sale date is October 11, btw.
I just called the Senator theater (in Towson). Here's the deal:
Tickets for the trilogy are $35. They go on sale Saturday the 11th at noon. No more than 10 tickets may be purchased at once. The trilogy will be shown back-to-back-to-back on December 16th (Tuesday) starting at noon. The Senator theater is at www.senator.com or 410-435-8338.
GF.
Other tools that I use extensively, but which are not necessarily "home user" applications are:
As far as entertainment titles go, it really depends on your preferences, but mine are: