The W/sq ft isn't what really interests me - it's the sheer economics. I'll probably prove my lack of caffeination here, so feel free to correct.
BP makes a 200W solar panel, which you can buy for $1100
200W = 0.2kW
0.2kW * 10h/day * 30 days = 60kWh/month
Looking at my electric bill, I pay about $0.10 per kWh.
$0.10/kWh * 60kWh/month = $6/month saved by using the panel.
$1100/$6/month = 183 months or about 15 years before I would break even.
I fail to see why I would ever buy a panel at $5.5/W. It would have to be in the $2/W range before it would be economical for me to consider it. And that's assuming I get the full 200W out of the panel - not a guarantee in the NE of the US. It would probably be half that, averaged over the entire year. That's in the $1/W range.
Are there any panels anywhere near this range? I can see $4/W, and rumors but no real purchasing info on $3/W panels. And, of course, this doesn't count the cost of install and wiring.
A good portion of this country spends several months enjoying this thing called "winter". Enjoying, that is, if they're not driving a motorcycle or scooter.
Now, you might say, "get one for the summer". But I've done the math - a small compact with snow tires would make such a purchase (for me at least) an 8-10 year payoff. Over 8 years, I carry enough passengers, cargo, garbage, and beer in the summer to justify not buying a motorcycle. Even the super-cheap new Ninja, which retails at like $3,500.
I didn't mean that it took a year - for an entire year it's done what she needed it to do. No honeymoon period, no "installed it and 3 weeks later she's back to XP". A full year of Kubuntu chugging along, working slick as can be. And about 10% of the help calls compared to windows.
This is why my mom now runs ubuntu. She kept asking me how I dealt with stupid windows problems, and I kept having to tell her I didn't. She finally said, 'well, can I use linux too?" and the answer was "yes".
A year down the line and it does what she wants it to do. It boots, gives her access to the internet, comes with a thousand solitaire games, recognized the HP printer/scanner without drivers, and comes with a basic word processor.
A switch to gmail allowed her to control her spam problem she had with lycos, and gave her an ultra-basic IM capability in the process.
It is surprising that the year of Linux on the Desktop came not for the geeks and power-users, but for joe luser. Linux + a small, cheap laptop really does make for a "computer as an appliance" setup.
Either that, or you could invest $0.01 in a bent paperclip and rip the caps-lock key off with it. The only computer I use regularly with a caps-lock key still attached is my laptop. And to be honest, it just occurred to me that I don't know the reason for that....
It ought to be, but on my EEE PC it locks up for 1-3 seconds at at time. Noticeable when the entire thing grays out, but really irritating when it doesn't, and I multi-click because I thought the touch-pad wasn't responding, when it was the browser itself. "Undo close tab" is fast becoming my best friend.
I was just thinking about something along the same lines - a P2P program that doesn't download and store - it just buffers and streams. Call it "Borrow my Music" or something. And instead of downloading to own, you just download to listen to, then the cache is purged.
Could you bypass this, and save files? Sure. Just like you could do with library. But like a library, the design and assumption is that you're borrowing it. This setup would make this hard to shut down without shutting down libraries as well.
Honestly, based on a lot of the really smart people I know, (PhDs in sci/engineering and the like) the periodic drug test might be one of the top reasons. I think something like half (no, I don't have a source - feel free to supply one if you want to make me look good/bad.) of the US population has tried pot, and something like 10-15% are regular smokers. Even if that percentage was consistent across our best and brightest, you'd be limiting the pool of those who would then have to decide if the rest of the things you mentioned were worth the job. In my experience, the "best and brightest" are more likely to occasionally indulge, as they are smart enough to do it safely and effectively, and successful enough that they can afford it.
This small percentage also discounts the additional 5-10% who would avoid a govt job because their S.O. or close friends smoke, even if they don't. And the percentage who would avoid it due to the distaste of being forced to pee in a cup on a regular basis. Legalize pot, and I bet you'd see more of the best and brightest in govt jobs.
As an educator, I can tell you that it's not quite this easy, but it's close. The major issue is how NCLB actually measures "success". Generally, there are four categories for a student to score in:
Below the Standard Approaching the Standard Meeting the Standard Exceeding the Standard
The way the law is written, a certain number of students need to Meet or Exceed the "standard".
If you're a school with a fair number of kids "exceeding", but a lot "approaching" the standard (which is nebulous and changes from year to year and state to state) it makes far more sense to stop trying to get the kids in the top category to improve, as they can't, nor does it gain you anything. The only metric which will show that you're improving as a school is if more of the kids below the standard move up towards it. If kids above it fall, it's not a big deal, as long as they don't fall out of the "meets the standard" category.
If it was a school average, or a correlation coefficient or something like that, it would make sense to help the smart kids. But because it's a straight "% meeting or exceeding the standard", there is no benefit in pushing or even caring about the smart kids.
There is only one judge in American education today, and it's whether or not your school can leap over the moving and wispy NCLB "meets the standard" bar. It's stupid, poorly designed, and utterly worthless as a metric to determine school success. But it's simple enough that stupid people can understand how their school is doing, and thus we will use it as an excuse to prop up a pretty shoddy education system. The bright kids will continue to get put down, and the dumb kids will be given enough support that they will all poke their noses above the standard, and everyone will be happy that their school "met the standard".
My bet is that he's secretly doing a Sociology or Psychology thesis, by trolling dorks on the internet. I mean, Emacs vs vi would have been to obvious, as would have been Windows vs Linux. This is just far enough under the auto-flame line, and just vague enough that it could pass as actual research.
That, or he's invested in tinfoil, and trying to make me start a hat revolution.
The problem is with the protest part: If enough people "protest" by not buying it, the "truth thermocline" (shamelessly stolen from a previous comment posted here today) will convert that into a "piracy" problem.
As I understand it, it goes like this: CEO: Why are our sales low, Level 2 Exec? Is it piracy? Level 2 Exec: Why are our sales low, Level 3 Exec? Is it piracy? Level 3 Exec: Why are our sales low, mid-level manager who actually knows what's going on? Mid-level manager: Well, our DRM is so restrictive, it's locking out legitimate users. They're refusing to buy our product, because it's easier to pirate it. Level 3 Exec: Level 2 Exec - you were right, it's piracy. ...continues on up to the CEO
This would stop if shareholders could grasp that "low sales means PIRATES!!!" actually means "the game sucked" or "our DRM was so bad that it drove legitimate users away". Unfortunately, the "truth thermocline" which exists a few levels down in management means that the real information about the problem almost never makes it to the top. And sadly enough, most of the information the shareholders get is from the people above this level.
I mean, if you're making a couple of million a year, you're not going to tell the man that signs your paycheck that he's wrong, and that your product is a piece of shit, are you?
As I went from a 300 Watt power supply to a 450, to a 500 to a 650, this started to worry me to. Slap in a few drives, two DVD/CD burners, bigass video card, more cores, faster bus speeds, and the wattage adds up fast.
After a several years of this, I took the $300 I managed to get back from the IRS and bought an Asus EEE PC. It does enough basic desktop/internet stuff decently well enough that I rarely fire up the massive desktop in the other room EXCEPT when I need that sort of horsepower.
Home from work, sipping a gin and tonic, and posting to slashdot - no need to fire up a desktop for that. SSHing into my server to add a theme to the PHPBB3 forum we're setting up - no need for a desktop to do that. Editing css themes for pages there? Again, a basic linux desktop and shell (Xubuntu, if you're wondering) works fine. Sure, the keyboard is tiny, but I don't really care if my wpm drops to about 20 while posting to slashdot, or editing css files on a remote server. This isn't work - it's leisure time. And I don't schedule things by the minute, or even by the hour.
My desktop get very little use now. And really, my recliner is more comfortable than the office chair is, so I don't miss it all that much. And this is even more energy efficient than powering down the video card. I think the EEE-PC draws LESS power than this video card does on STANDBY. Of course that's less than just the video card - one can't ignore the additional overhead from the PSU inefficiency, drives kept spinning, processor cycles, fans, etc.
Actually, Hitler shot himself in the foot. He indeed had the entire world conquered, but for one thing: He didn't let his military commanders actually run the war. Had he recruited competent military men rather than yes-men, and had he let his competent staff actually make strategic decisions, the war would have been lost.
Luckily for us, he was an egomaniac who neglected development of his air force, especially in the critical periods late in the war. And luckily for us, he often favored political gains (Leningrad & Stalingrad, bombing London) over military gains. Had he been a strategic genius, or had he listened to advisers, he would have won the war.
The resources of all of Europe, including England, would have made it hard for us to attack overseas. It's one thing to slip across the channel at night and launch an attack on the French coast. No matter the might of the US military, a large-scale attack like that coming all the way across an ocean is doomed to failure. And with that much breathing room, the Soviet Union would have been toast.
It wasn't an alliance that brought down Germany in WWII - it was pure ego.
I'm not sure how much longer this will last anyway. Not too hard to imagine the cable companies going to an all-on-demand, micro-pay-per-view system.
Why bother broadcasting when you can charge someone if they decide that they don't like your show, and want to change to another channel? You need to get that "lost" advertising back somehow. And in this scenario, you simply pay a bit more for the archive of older shows, so if you miss an episode you can still see it.
Why pay MORE for a DVR? We archive all shows! Pay for only what you *want* to see, not all the rest! Tired of being told what to watch, when? Get 100 sitcoms, 10 sporting events, and 20 movies a month for only $100! On-demand, whenever you want to watch them!
I thank you very much for that link. I'm probably only about 3 hours south of there, so a visit may be in order. In turn, I'll point you to Brewery Ommegang, just outside of Cooperstown, NY. Their beers are spectacular, especially their Abbey Ale, perhaps my favorite beer in the world. Their Three Philosophers is also outstanding.
You ignorant, stupid, godless Canadian. It's no wonder you're a second-rate country. If our children see the godless gays kissing at a ballgame, they'll become godless gays themselves.
I mean, what the fuck are you thinking? "I can't really see why anybody is against gay marriage" That sort of attitude will ruin a country. Look at Rome! Look at Ancient Greece! Both fell due to rampant, unchristian homosexuality. Do you want that for Canadia? We don't want that for the US. We have GOD on our side, and why the hell would we risk that? God GOT us this country, and by god, In God We Trust. You can ruin your country, but when the Rapture comes, you're all toast. And the US will remain, a sterling beacon of truthiness and godliness shining above the blackened lands of the rest of the world.
Not to inject off-topic facts into this discussion, (ok, I can't resist it) but Corona is one of the worst beers ever.
You see, there are three major things (aside from frat boys) which ruin beer: heat, (not too hard to work around) oxygen, and light.
Corona is in a clear bottle in a low six-pack, with a twist-top. The twist-top is far worse at sealing out oxygen, the low cardboard lets in more light, and the clear bottle lets in even more.
How do you fix these problems? Jack it full of preservatives, and then market the culture of the beer to revolve around adding some citric acid to hide that shitty taste. Compare Corona against a well crafted, all natural ale, and most people can taste the shite in it. For instance, try really seriously comparing Corona against a good Belgian white ale. The taste difference is amazing.
God I've turned into a beer snob. Hand-crafted Belgian ales ftw.
My best idea would be to move your data to your normal backup medium, then resize/reformat your drive as needed.
Of course, if you don't back up, your file system of choice is moot. Recently, I doubled my drive space for less than half what the initial drive space cost. I formatted the new drive as needed, and then copied things over, and mirrored the old drive. Everything fails, it's a matter of when, not if.
Wtf? The gui tools available NATIVELY don't allow for any comprehensive management of Unix/Linux systems. Less is more, terminal is faster, text over ssh, bash scripting - the entire culture of *nix is anti-gui.
How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?
I think that scenario is what will limit most "space sports" on the international space station. Until they have a large, empty compartment which can get wet and have particulate matter floating in it without problem, most "space games" will be tame, low-energy events.
And with the price per cubic foot of the ISS, I'm guessing that nobody is planning to send up an empty room for the astronauts to mess around in. Something like a combo of racquetball and air-hockey might be a ton of fun. Have a goal to defend, and take turns winging a ball at the other person's goal. Orientation would change, and pushing off to get in position would be a huge part of the game.
And if one were to send up a large enough unit, with enough stuff in it, a game of zero-G lasertag or paintball would be killer.
But again, we're far more likely to see "Zero-G Paper Football" than anything interesting, least anything on the ISS get damaged. However, once the first Space Hotel is built, that all changes. I'd bet that there will be a space version of the X-Games in the first 6 months, tops.
As much as I hate and loathe Diebold, to be fair, they had the following scenario:
A customer wants to pay a small amount of money for an insecure and poorly built product of theirs. Do they:
A) Not sell them that product. or B) Sell them the product they are requesting.
While I hate to be a Diebold apologist, this would NOT have happened if their customers (our various governments) had clearly and contractually stipulated what these machines were required to do. I haven't heard much in the way of Diebold seriously breaking contract and providing a government with machines far outside the specifications in the contract.
If our governments would get their act together and contract out for decent machines, we'd get decent machines. As it is, we're giving Diebold a handout for something that's not worth buying. Blame the govt, for their JOB is to make voting fair and accurate. Don't blame Diebold, since their JOB is to make money, something they're doing (well, maybe not enough to make it worthwhile, it seems) selling us the machines we ask for.
When you contract out for something with clear, well-thought-out and complete specifications (like an ATM or the optical scanners my voting district uses) Diebold can produce a decent product. Of course, it helps if you approach it as a business proposal instead of a hand-out, political favor, or payback.
I do both, albeit with 320gb drives. My main system has mirrored 320s, and once a month or so when I think of it, I back those up to two 160gb drives on another system.
In another few years when my storage needs expand, the 320s will go in the backup computer, and I'll mirror a couple of 600gb drives in the main computer, and off-line backup onto the 320s.
That was our solution to spambots on our small (12 active people or so) forum. We used very forum-specific questions to allow registration, and only registered users can post. If someone can't answer the questions, they aren't into the subject enough that we would want them there discussing it. Or they're a spammer, and don't know that the proper answer to the "what would you like to do to a spammer" question is the answer which is exceptionally painful.
But really, as long as you have an authentication method which is significantly hard/unique, you'll be safe. Spamming is a "low hanging fruit" operation. Quantity over qualify, 90% of the time. In fact, the answer to killing off spambots might very well be everyone designing their own authentication. Right now, there are a half-dozen major ones. Crack one, and you have access to millions of places. If instead there were thousands, the time required to break one would not necessarily be worth the money you could get from doing it.
Our forums are not worth programming the automated bots to crack, so we're 100% spam free now, for the first time in a few years. It's not a hard authentication - just different from 99.9% of the rest of them. Hell, most people could answer "what color is this page", even if they had to look at the raw html and google the color hex. But for one page, it's not worth programming a bot to do. Unique authentication methods will kill spambots.
Slashdot Mirror
The W/sq ft isn't what really interests me - it's the sheer economics. I'll probably prove my lack of caffeination here, so feel free to correct.
BP makes a 200W solar panel, which you can buy for $1100
200W = 0.2kW
0.2kW * 10h/day * 30 days = 60kWh/month
Looking at my electric bill, I pay about $0.10 per kWh.
$0.10/kWh * 60kWh/month = $6/month saved by using the panel.
$1100/$6/month = 183 months or about 15 years before I would break even.
I fail to see why I would ever buy a panel at $5.5/W. It would have to be in the $2/W range before it would be economical for me to consider it. And that's assuming I get the full 200W out of the panel - not a guarantee in the NE of the US. It would probably be half that, averaged over the entire year. That's in the $1/W range.
Are there any panels anywhere near this range? I can see $4/W, and rumors but no real purchasing info on $3/W panels. And, of course, this doesn't count the cost of install and wiring.
Damn...at -30 with a windchill from traveling 40mph in freezing spray from the other vehicles on the road? Damn, you're a badass.
A good portion of this country spends several months enjoying this thing called "winter". Enjoying, that is, if they're not driving a motorcycle or scooter.
Now, you might say, "get one for the summer". But I've done the math - a small compact with snow tires would make such a purchase (for me at least) an 8-10 year payoff. Over 8 years, I carry enough passengers, cargo, garbage, and beer in the summer to justify not buying a motorcycle. Even the super-cheap new Ninja, which retails at like $3,500.
I didn't mean that it took a year - for an entire year it's done what she needed it to do. No honeymoon period, no "installed it and 3 weeks later she's back to XP". A full year of Kubuntu chugging along, working slick as can be. And about 10% of the help calls compared to windows.
This is why my mom now runs ubuntu. She kept asking me how I dealt with stupid windows problems, and I kept having to tell her I didn't. She finally said, 'well, can I use linux too?" and the answer was "yes".
A year down the line and it does what she wants it to do. It boots, gives her access to the internet, comes with a thousand solitaire games, recognized the HP printer/scanner without drivers, and comes with a basic word processor.
A switch to gmail allowed her to control her spam problem she had with lycos, and gave her an ultra-basic IM capability in the process.
It is surprising that the year of Linux on the Desktop came not for the geeks and power-users, but for joe luser. Linux + a small, cheap laptop really does make for a "computer as an appliance" setup.
Either that, or you could invest $0.01 in a bent paperclip and rip the caps-lock key off with it. The only computer I use regularly with a caps-lock key still attached is my laptop. And to be honest, it just occurred to me that I don't know the reason for that....
It ought to be, but on my EEE PC it locks up for 1-3 seconds at at time. Noticeable when the entire thing grays out, but really irritating when it doesn't, and I multi-click because I thought the touch-pad wasn't responding, when it was the browser itself. "Undo close tab" is fast becoming my best friend.
I was just thinking about something along the same lines - a P2P program that doesn't download and store - it just buffers and streams. Call it "Borrow my Music" or something. And instead of downloading to own, you just download to listen to, then the cache is purged.
Could you bypass this, and save files? Sure. Just like you could do with library. But like a library, the design and assumption is that you're borrowing it. This setup would make this hard to shut down without shutting down libraries as well.
Honestly, based on a lot of the really smart people I know, (PhDs in sci/engineering and the like) the periodic drug test might be one of the top reasons. I think something like half (no, I don't have a source - feel free to supply one if you want to make me look good/bad.) of the US population has tried pot, and something like 10-15% are regular smokers. Even if that percentage was consistent across our best and brightest, you'd be limiting the pool of those who would then have to decide if the rest of the things you mentioned were worth the job. In my experience, the "best and brightest" are more likely to occasionally indulge, as they are smart enough to do it safely and effectively, and successful enough that they can afford it.
This small percentage also discounts the additional 5-10% who would avoid a govt job because their S.O. or close friends smoke, even if they don't. And the percentage who would avoid it due to the distaste of being forced to pee in a cup on a regular basis. Legalize pot, and I bet you'd see more of the best and brightest in govt jobs.
As an educator, I can tell you that it's not quite this easy, but it's close. The major issue is how NCLB actually measures "success". Generally, there are four categories for a student to score in:
Below the Standard
Approaching the Standard
Meeting the Standard
Exceeding the Standard
The way the law is written, a certain number of students need to Meet or Exceed the "standard".
If you're a school with a fair number of kids "exceeding", but a lot "approaching" the standard (which is nebulous and changes from year to year and state to state) it makes far more sense to stop trying to get the kids in the top category to improve, as they can't, nor does it gain you anything. The only metric which will show that you're improving as a school is if more of the kids below the standard move up towards it. If kids above it fall, it's not a big deal, as long as they don't fall out of the "meets the standard" category.
If it was a school average, or a correlation coefficient or something like that, it would make sense to help the smart kids. But because it's a straight "% meeting or exceeding the standard", there is no benefit in pushing or even caring about the smart kids.
There is only one judge in American education today, and it's whether or not your school can leap over the moving and wispy NCLB "meets the standard" bar. It's stupid, poorly designed, and utterly worthless as a metric to determine school success. But it's simple enough that stupid people can understand how their school is doing, and thus we will use it as an excuse to prop up a pretty shoddy education system. The bright kids will continue to get put down, and the dumb kids will be given enough support that they will all poke their noses above the standard, and everyone will be happy that their school "met the standard".
And yes, I say this as a teacher.
My bet is that he's secretly doing a Sociology or Psychology thesis, by trolling dorks on the internet. I mean, Emacs vs vi would have been to obvious, as would have been Windows vs Linux. This is just far enough under the auto-flame line, and just vague enough that it could pass as actual research.
That, or he's invested in tinfoil, and trying to make me start a hat revolution.
The problem is with the protest part: If enough people "protest" by not buying it, the "truth thermocline" (shamelessly stolen from a previous comment posted here today) will convert that into a "piracy" problem.
...continues on up to the CEO
As I understand it, it goes like this:
CEO: Why are our sales low, Level 2 Exec? Is it piracy?
Level 2 Exec: Why are our sales low, Level 3 Exec? Is it piracy?
Level 3 Exec: Why are our sales low, mid-level manager who actually knows what's going on?
Mid-level manager: Well, our DRM is so restrictive, it's locking out legitimate users. They're refusing to buy our product, because it's easier to pirate it.
Level 3 Exec: Level 2 Exec - you were right, it's piracy.
This would stop if shareholders could grasp that "low sales means PIRATES!!!" actually means "the game sucked" or "our DRM was so bad that it drove legitimate users away". Unfortunately, the "truth thermocline" which exists a few levels down in management means that the real information about the problem almost never makes it to the top. And sadly enough, most of the information the shareholders get is from the people above this level.
I mean, if you're making a couple of million a year, you're not going to tell the man that signs your paycheck that he's wrong, and that your product is a piece of shit, are you?
As I went from a 300 Watt power supply to a 450, to a 500 to a 650, this started to worry me to. Slap in a few drives, two DVD/CD burners, bigass video card, more cores, faster bus speeds, and the wattage adds up fast.
After a several years of this, I took the $300 I managed to get back from the IRS and bought an Asus EEE PC. It does enough basic desktop/internet stuff decently well enough that I rarely fire up the massive desktop in the other room EXCEPT when I need that sort of horsepower.
Home from work, sipping a gin and tonic, and posting to slashdot - no need to fire up a desktop for that. SSHing into my server to add a theme to the PHPBB3 forum we're setting up - no need for a desktop to do that. Editing css themes for pages there? Again, a basic linux desktop and shell (Xubuntu, if you're wondering) works fine. Sure, the keyboard is tiny, but I don't really care if my wpm drops to about 20 while posting to slashdot, or editing css files on a remote server. This isn't work - it's leisure time. And I don't schedule things by the minute, or even by the hour.
My desktop get very little use now. And really, my recliner is more comfortable than the office chair is, so I don't miss it all that much. And this is even more energy efficient than powering down the video card. I think the EEE-PC draws LESS power than this video card does on STANDBY. Of course that's less than just the video card - one can't ignore the additional overhead from the PSU inefficiency, drives kept spinning, processor cycles, fans, etc.
Actually, Hitler shot himself in the foot. He indeed had the entire world conquered, but for one thing: He didn't let his military commanders actually run the war. Had he recruited competent military men rather than yes-men, and had he let his competent staff actually make strategic decisions, the war would have been lost.
Luckily for us, he was an egomaniac who neglected development of his air force, especially in the critical periods late in the war. And luckily for us, he often favored political gains (Leningrad & Stalingrad, bombing London) over military gains. Had he been a strategic genius, or had he listened to advisers, he would have won the war.
The resources of all of Europe, including England, would have made it hard for us to attack overseas. It's one thing to slip across the channel at night and launch an attack on the French coast. No matter the might of the US military, a large-scale attack like that coming all the way across an ocean is doomed to failure. And with that much breathing room, the Soviet Union would have been toast.
It wasn't an alliance that brought down Germany in WWII - it was pure ego.
I'm not sure how much longer this will last anyway. Not too hard to imagine the cable companies going to an all-on-demand, micro-pay-per-view system.
Why bother broadcasting when you can charge someone if they decide that they don't like your show, and want to change to another channel? You need to get that "lost" advertising back somehow. And in this scenario, you simply pay a bit more for the archive of older shows, so if you miss an episode you can still see it.
Why pay MORE for a DVR? We archive all shows! Pay for only what you *want* to see, not all the rest! Tired of being told what to watch, when? Get 100 sitcoms, 10 sporting events, and 20 movies a month for only $100! On-demand, whenever you want to watch them!
I thank you very much for that link. I'm probably only about 3 hours south of there, so a visit may be in order. In turn, I'll point you to Brewery Ommegang, just outside of Cooperstown, NY. Their beers are spectacular, especially their Abbey Ale, perhaps my favorite beer in the world. Their Three Philosophers is also outstanding.
I'll never understand why people would rather pound shitty, poor tasting alcohol rather than sip good stuff.
When it comes to tequila, I put a shot or two of high quality stuff on an ice cube or two, with a twist of lime.
Why shot, and why chug? You can sip the good stuff, and actually enjoy it. And while it will take longer, it will still get you drunk.
You ignorant, stupid, godless Canadian. It's no wonder you're a second-rate country. If our children see the godless gays kissing at a ballgame, they'll become godless gays themselves.
I mean, what the fuck are you thinking? "I can't really see why anybody is against gay marriage" That sort of attitude will ruin a country. Look at Rome! Look at Ancient Greece! Both fell due to rampant, unchristian homosexuality. Do you want that for Canadia? We don't want that for the US. We have GOD on our side, and why the hell would we risk that? God GOT us this country, and by god, In God We Trust. You can ruin your country, but when the Rapture comes, you're all toast. And the US will remain, a sterling beacon of truthiness and godliness shining above the blackened lands of the rest of the world.
And THAT'S what's wrong with gay marriage.
Not to inject off-topic facts into this discussion, (ok, I can't resist it) but Corona is one of the worst beers ever.
You see, there are three major things (aside from frat boys) which ruin beer: heat, (not too hard to work around) oxygen, and light.
Corona is in a clear bottle in a low six-pack, with a twist-top. The twist-top is far worse at sealing out oxygen, the low cardboard lets in more light, and the clear bottle lets in even more.
How do you fix these problems? Jack it full of preservatives, and then market the culture of the beer to revolve around adding some citric acid to hide that shitty taste. Compare Corona against a well crafted, all natural ale, and most people can taste the shite in it. For instance, try really seriously comparing Corona against a good Belgian white ale. The taste difference is amazing.
God I've turned into a beer snob. Hand-crafted Belgian ales ftw.
My best idea would be to move your data to your normal backup medium, then resize/reformat your drive as needed.
Of course, if you don't back up, your file system of choice is moot. Recently, I doubled my drive space for less than half what the initial drive space cost. I formatted the new drive as needed, and then copied things over, and mirrored the old drive. Everything fails, it's a matter of when, not if.
Wtf? The gui tools available NATIVELY don't allow for any comprehensive management of Unix/Linux systems. Less is more, terminal is faster, text over ssh, bash scripting - the entire culture of *nix is anti-gui.
How the fuck is MS going to make a gui to manage such systems?
Or are they just reimplementing an ssh terminal?
I think that scenario is what will limit most "space sports" on the international space station. Until they have a large, empty compartment which can get wet and have particulate matter floating in it without problem, most "space games" will be tame, low-energy events.
And with the price per cubic foot of the ISS, I'm guessing that nobody is planning to send up an empty room for the astronauts to mess around in. Something like a combo of racquetball and air-hockey might be a ton of fun. Have a goal to defend, and take turns winging a ball at the other person's goal. Orientation would change, and pushing off to get in position would be a huge part of the game.
And if one were to send up a large enough unit, with enough stuff in it, a game of zero-G lasertag or paintball would be killer.
But again, we're far more likely to see "Zero-G Paper Football" than anything interesting, least anything on the ISS get damaged. However, once the first Space Hotel is built, that all changes. I'd bet that there will be a space version of the X-Games in the first 6 months, tops.
As much as I hate and loathe Diebold, to be fair, they had the following scenario:
A customer wants to pay a small amount of money for an insecure and poorly built product of theirs. Do they:
A) Not sell them that product.
or
B) Sell them the product they are requesting.
While I hate to be a Diebold apologist, this would NOT have happened if their customers (our various governments) had clearly and contractually stipulated what these machines were required to do. I haven't heard much in the way of Diebold seriously breaking contract and providing a government with machines far outside the specifications in the contract.
If our governments would get their act together and contract out for decent machines, we'd get decent machines. As it is, we're giving Diebold a handout for something that's not worth buying. Blame the govt, for their JOB is to make voting fair and accurate. Don't blame Diebold, since their JOB is to make money, something they're doing (well, maybe not enough to make it worthwhile, it seems) selling us the machines we ask for.
When you contract out for something with clear, well-thought-out and complete specifications (like an ATM or the optical scanners my voting district uses) Diebold can produce a decent product. Of course, it helps if you approach it as a business proposal instead of a hand-out, political favor, or payback.
Onto another 500gb disk. Or two 250gb disks.
I do both, albeit with 320gb drives. My main system has mirrored 320s, and once a month or so when I think of it, I back those up to two 160gb drives on another system.
In another few years when my storage needs expand, the 320s will go in the backup computer, and I'll mirror a couple of 600gb drives in the main computer, and off-line backup onto the 320s.
That was our solution to spambots on our small (12 active people or so) forum. We used very forum-specific questions to allow registration, and only registered users can post. If someone can't answer the questions, they aren't into the subject enough that we would want them there discussing it. Or they're a spammer, and don't know that the proper answer to the "what would you like to do to a spammer" question is the answer which is exceptionally painful.
But really, as long as you have an authentication method which is significantly hard/unique, you'll be safe. Spamming is a "low hanging fruit" operation. Quantity over qualify, 90% of the time. In fact, the answer to killing off spambots might very well be everyone designing their own authentication. Right now, there are a half-dozen major ones. Crack one, and you have access to millions of places. If instead there were thousands, the time required to break one would not necessarily be worth the money you could get from doing it.
Our forums are not worth programming the automated bots to crack, so we're 100% spam free now, for the first time in a few years. It's not a hard authentication - just different from 99.9% of the rest of them. Hell, most people could answer "what color is this page", even if they had to look at the raw html and google the color hex. But for one page, it's not worth programming a bot to do. Unique authentication methods will kill spambots.