I was having great difficulty reading the blogger's site. Fortunately I found the following translation program, which you can use to make the text readable:
#Translate from Dumbass to English:
s/ [Dd]a / the/mg
I don't see what all the fuss is about. This seems like a good idea.
SLASHDOT DISCLAIMER: IN COMPLIANCE WITH NEW JERSEY PENAL CODE 15-1302, SLASHDOT HAS PERFORMED ALL REQUIRED CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ON USER FROBOZ23, WHOSE LEGALLY REGISTERED NAME IS ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK. IN 1996, THIS PERSON HAD NON-CONSENTING SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH AN AQUATIC MAMMAL, A CLASS 12 FELONY. OH, AND THERE WAS ALSO THAT J-WALKING TICKET BACK IN '92. FOR SHAME. IF YOU INSIST ON MEETING WITH THIS VILE, NASTY PERSON, WE RECOMMEND YOU MEET IN A PUBLIC PLACE. PRE-PLAN YOUR ESCAPE ROUTES, AND BRING A HIGH-CALIBER WEAPON, JUST IN CASE.
If someone hacked into my bank account and stole $10,000, that could also be "fixed with a few database commands." It's just bits on a disk, but it also translates to $10,000 in the real world. So it's grand theft, and fraud. Throw the book at the guy.
There is a particularly scary application for this type of software. Imagine surveillance cameras scanning a political rally. (Putin's new Russia comes to mind, but you can insert your own favorite government here as you please.) An advanced system could detect dissent by individuals' facial expressions during the rally, and deal with it appropriately. Sometimes facial expressions happen subconsciously. You have to focus to maintain a poker-face. </Paranoia>
From a computer-science perspective, I find this stuff fascinating. But anything that can gauge a person's emotions, especially if they don't know they're being watched, has a lot of room for abuse.
Plus, since it's Sony BMG, you may be getting some free "software" with that, too.
The problem with the pricing is that it 6 bucks for one hit song, and then a remix and an "older track". So really you're just buying the single song, unless you're really into remixes. The "older track" is probably anything they want to slap in there.
It's nice to see that Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Amazon have agreed to support the configuration. The only people that won't support it are the consumers. Details. Details...
How does NASA let this kind of filth be posted on their websites? Doesn't the Administration have censors to prevent these kinds of morally dubious scientific discoveries?
Like hell if I'm ever going to let my children visit that star system.
Here's an undercover look into the thought processes employed by highschool freshmen to determine their majors:
Butthead: Huh huh. Beavis, you should major in proctology. Beavis: Proctowhat? What the hell are you talking about Butthead? Butthead: Proctology. It's the study of other guys' butts. Huh huh. Huh huh. Beavis: Oh, yeah. Huh huh. Real funny Butthead... Beavis: I wonder if I could major in Cornholio? Yeah! Yeah! That would be cool. I want to be Major Cornholio! That would kick ass! Butthead: More like Major Dumbass. Huh huh. Huh huh. Beavis: Hey! Screw you Butthead! Stop writing on my form! A fight ensues, in which both Major Declaration forms are ripped to shreds...
The most disturbing part is, nefarious organizations are willing to sell this top secret material to the the highest bidder. Just imagine if this were to fall into the hands of the terrorists.
I'm not sure what an Atari 2600 is. Probably some kind of NASA super computer...
Trivia tidbit: The "department" for this story is the Q-36-explosive-space-modulator, a reference to Marvin the Martian. If you check the wikipedia article on Marvin the Martian, you'll see that the correct name for the explosive is the Illudium PU-36 Explosive Space Modulator.
The original reference to "Uranium PU-36" changed to "Illudium PU-36" in subsequent cartoons. Some people mistake the sound of "PU" for a "Q" and say "Q-36." However, the weapon's name is derived from the letters "PU" which coincidentally is the atomic symbol for Plutonium.
I have always pronounced it as "PU-36", but I had to double check it with the infallible wikipeda, just to be sure.
On my 2006 Mustang, the air conditioning controls are all digital. One of the buttons controls whether the AC air flow should recirculate the interior air, or pull the air from outside the car. The problem is, this button defaults to external air, and it doesn't save the previous value when you remove the key from the ignition. So, every time I start my car and want to use the AC, I always have to toggle the air intake button. I live in Arizona, where car AC is essential, and is used 6 months out of the year. I've probably pushed that damn air intake button over 500 times in the past year. I smell a class-action lawsuit for unnecessary finger strain. =P
When you're using the AC, whether for heating or cooling, that should imply you want the air temperature inside the car to be different than the air temperature outside the car, so pulling air from outside the car is a dumb default.
My other gripe involves Windows Update. I have it enabled to patch the multitude of security flaws in XP. It automatically downloads and installs security updates. OK, I can live with that. But then, when it's done installing, it displays a pop-up that says the computer will automatically restart in 5 minutes. If you press cancel, it will wait 10 minutes or so, and display the message again. I was in the middle of working on a major software project when I got this stupid message. I didn't want to waste the 15 minutes required to close out all my 20+ xterm windows, restart the system, reconnect to work, and open all my xterms again. So I spent the next 3 hours clicking the "cancel reboot" button every 10 minutes, until I finally got sick of it, and let the damn thing reboot. Great feature.
A simple "Don't remind me again" checkbox would have prevented this frustration.
Another nice side-effect of this feature is that if you step away from your computer for more than 10 minutes and a security update happens to come in while you're gone, you'll come back to a rebooted computer with no explanation.
I'm guessing Negroponte's main concern is volume. To drop the price of the laptop, they need to maximize volume of units produced. If Intel takes half, or more, of the "market" share, this will undermine OLPC's volume of scale.
The use of the iPod is just a symptom. They have to go after the root cause if they want to solve this problem. Rather than making it illegal to cross the street while using an iPod, they should make it illegal to walk in front a speeding car, regardless of what you're doing when it happens. A stiff $100 fine would certainly be sufficient deterrent to keep me from walking in front of a speeding car.
If you could move a star (details, details) then this would be a good way to get yourself noticed.
True. I suspect this is another failed viral marketing attempt by Sony. Did any one happen to notice if the supernova was shaped like the letters P S P?
allofmp3 was tempting, but I steered clear of it, exactly because of what is happening now. If the RIAA can get any traction with the US and Russian governements, this may result in a settlement. And you can bet that part of that settlement is going to be allofmp3 handing over a complete list all US credit card purchases. The RIAA could use this data to unleash a massive wave of lawsuits on US consumers who "shopped" on allofmp3, since they were essentially buying stolen goods. (Yes, I know, copyright violation is not the same as theft. But the RIAA thinks differently.)
When you deal with shady companies, don't expect them to protect your privacy. In fact, you should expect the opposite.
I would agree that some people are more prone to addictive behavior than others, and that the addictive people need help when their addiction gets to the point that it is interfering with their quality of life. Calling this addiction "Internet addiction" does sound more like a flashy news headline. However, in terms of treatment, the specific focus of the addiction obviously plays a factor. The therapy in this case would be two fold. First, you'd have to concentrate on reducing the patient's specific addiction, in this case to the internet. Then, you'd have to focus on the core addictive tendencies, so that the patient wouldn't just switch from internet addiction to some other addiction.
For clarification, your analogy of a child cleaning excessively is probably a bad example. Compulsive cleaning falls under obsessive compulsive behavior. OCD behaviors appear to have a physiological basis, at least in part. OCD also differs from internet addiction in that the behavior is often irrational, and provides no benefit to the individual. An internet addict at least gets some actual benefit out of his activities, by learning new things, or making friends online. A person that cleans their room for 5 hours straight gets no benefit, other than the misattributed pleasure of the cleaning experience, because their room was probably already completely organized and spotless when they started cleaning. In OCD cases that involve hand washing, the person will often wash their hands raw, resulting in injury and possible infection.
Pharmacological therapies are the most effective at helping OCD patients, combined with behavioral or cognative therapy. Internet addiction, on the other hand, would probably not require any medication, and could be resolved directly through behavioral or cognative therapy.
We should save every species we can, but to have only lost one with all that's changed in the past 50 years is actually a credit to us.
I think you misread the statistic. The quote from the article is:
[The White Dolphin's] disappearance is believed to be the first time in a half-century, since hunting killed off the Caribbean monk seal, that a large aquatic mammal has been driven to extinction.
Prior to the dispersion of humans across the earth, extinction was a purely natural phenomenon that generally occurred at a continuous low rate (mass extinctions being relatively rare events). Starting approximately 100,000 years ago, and coinciding with an increase in the numbers and range of humans, species extinctions have increased to a rate unprecedented since the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event. This is known as the Holocene extinction event and is at least the sixth such extinction event. Some experts have estimated that up to half of presently existing species may become extinct by 2100.
That's many millions of species. A 50% extinction rate isn't anything to be proud of. If we take a more conservative estimate of only 25%, well, that's still wiping out a quarter of all known living things on the planet.
Since this is both a prediction and a statistic, it is open to wide speculation. I suggest doing a Google on "rate of extiction", and jugde the sources of the statistics for yourselves. Here's another interesting search result:
Scientists estimate there are 10 to 30 million plant and animal species on the planet, most of them unidentified. Each year as many as 50,000 species disappear. Most die off, Tilman says, because of human activity. "We take natural habitats convert them to agriculture, to suburbia, to roads, to monoculture forestry. We fish the oceans so heavily we literally have these trolling nets that scrape the bottom of the ocean clean," he says.
What we really need is a game that joins the strengths of NWN with the strengths of Oblivion.
I only played NWN for a total of about 8 hours before giving up on it. It felt way too claustrophobic with the top-down viewing camera. It just wasn't immersive. One of the best immersive games I've ever played was Ultima 9. There is something to be said for a game that lets you pan your vision 360 degrees, especially when you're outside, looking at the night sky. I get the same feeling when playing Morrowind. That feeling is completely absent in NWN. It's the difference between just playing a game, and actually being in the game.
If the wonderful graphical elements of Oblivion, and it's immersive game play, could be married with the table-top Dungeon Master concepts of NWN, that would be the perfect RPG for me.
In fact, I see that as the final solution to all the weaknesses of MMORPGs. The biggest weakness of MMORPGS is repetition. If you had players controlling some of the monsters, and the most competent players controlling quests and plot twists, then you'd have a truly enjoyable online experience without any of the soul-crushing repetition. This is part of what NWN tried to achieve, though on a smaller scale than a full MMORPG. Unfortunately, the UI drove me away before I bothered to try playing a campaign online.
As for the graphics speed issues, I have my own solution for that, which the gaming industry surely hates. I tend to buy games about 2 years after they come out. I bought Morrowind last May, for $18. That included all the patch bug fixes, plus the two expansion packs. And even my old TI4200 video card is powerful enough to play that game at 1600 resolution with all settings maxed, making for a wonderful gaming experience. It's tough to wait on Oblivion, but I'll probably pick that up next year, when I upgrade my video card to something powerful enough to play Oblivion maxed. That would be the time I'd consider buying NWN2, but it sounds like it suffers from the same claustrophobia as the original. I'll have to try a demo before I'd consider picking it up.
If you ever encounter someone who says something like "that rule is gay" and you confront them on it they'll always point out they don't mean it as a derogatory homosexual remark, and not because they're just some backpedaling racist, most kids don't even realize someone would take offense at it because to them it's wholly unrelated in their mind.
Okay, I think I understand your logic.
So, if one kid tells another kid "You're gay", they don't mean that as a derogatory homosexual remark, they're just saying the other kid is stupid.
And if the same kid says "You're queer", that's also not a derogatory homosexual remark either.
And if the kid says "You're a fag", same.
And if the kid says "You're a homo"...
There's a pattern forming here. Strange. Why is it that every word associated with gay seems to also be a synonym for "bad"?
The homophobic tendencies of WoW surely pale in comparison to Runescape. The average age of a Runescaper is around 14. In highschool and juniorhigh, "gay" is a common staple of the vernacular.
Runescape's censor filter automatically blocks the word gay entirely. However, the word "gae" is used so often by the general populace that I usually don't bother to report it. It is always used as a synonym for "bad"..
After some reflection on this story, I will ask the Runescape players saying "gae" to find another or risk being reported for the basic rule violation of intentionally bypassing the censor.
Something odd just occurred to me. Couldn't you CDR RAID an important archive? Similar to hardrive RAIDing, you could save the data bits across multiple CDRs, with an extra CDR for a checksum. Then, if any CDR failed, you could rebuild it from the others.
Or you could just make 2 copies. But where's the fun in that?;)
CDR decay can be minimized by keeping the CDRs in an optimal storage environment. Some info about shelf life and optimal storage conditions can be found in the Wikipedia entry for CDRs. If you know if any other good links, please post them.
Another good idea is to share archive space with your relatives. I plan on sharing vital data with my parents and brother, things like digital audio recordings of my now late grandfather. That way, if one harddrive fails, I can retrieve the data from my relatives.
Slashdot Mirror
I was having great difficulty reading the blogger's site. Fortunately I found the following translation program, which you can use to make the text readable:
/mg
#Translate from Dumbass to English:
s/ [Dd]a / the
I don't see what all the fuss is about. This seems like a good idea.
SLASHDOT DISCLAIMER: IN COMPLIANCE WITH NEW JERSEY PENAL CODE 15-1302, SLASHDOT HAS PERFORMED ALL REQUIRED CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ON USER FROBOZ23, WHOSE LEGALLY REGISTERED NAME IS ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK. IN 1996, THIS PERSON HAD NON-CONSENTING SEXUAL RELATIONS WITH AN AQUATIC MAMMAL, A CLASS 12 FELONY. OH, AND THERE WAS ALSO THAT J-WALKING TICKET BACK IN '92. FOR SHAME. IF YOU INSIST ON MEETING WITH THIS VILE, NASTY PERSON, WE RECOMMEND YOU MEET IN A PUBLIC PLACE. PRE-PLAN YOUR ESCAPE ROUTES, AND BRING A HIGH-CALIBER WEAPON, JUST IN CASE.
If someone hacked into my bank account and stole $10,000, that could also be "fixed with a few database commands." It's just bits on a disk, but it also translates to $10,000 in the real world. So it's grand theft, and fraud. Throw the book at the guy.
There is a particularly scary application for this type of software. Imagine surveillance cameras scanning a political rally. (Putin's new Russia comes to mind, but you can insert your own favorite government here as you please.) An advanced system could detect dissent by individuals' facial expressions during the rally, and deal with it appropriately. Sometimes facial expressions happen subconsciously. You have to focus to maintain a poker-face.
</Paranoia>
From a computer-science perspective, I find this stuff fascinating. But anything that can gauge a person's emotions, especially if they don't know they're being watched, has a lot of room for abuse.
How do you kill that which has no life?
Well, now we know.
Plus, since it's Sony BMG, you may be getting some free "software" with that, too.
The problem with the pricing is that it 6 bucks for one hit song, and then a remix and an "older track". So really you're just buying the single song, unless you're really into remixes. The "older track" is probably anything they want to slap in there.
It's nice to see that Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Amazon have agreed to support the configuration. The only people that won't support it are the consumers. Details. Details...
How does NASA let this kind of filth be posted on their websites? Doesn't the Administration have censors to prevent these kinds of morally dubious scientific discoveries?
Like hell if I'm ever going to let my children visit that star system.
Here's an undercover look into the thought processes employed by highschool freshmen to determine their majors:
Butthead: Huh huh. Beavis, you should major in proctology.
Beavis: Proctowhat? What the hell are you talking about Butthead?
Butthead: Proctology. It's the study of other guys' butts. Huh huh. Huh huh.
Beavis: Oh, yeah. Huh huh. Real funny Butthead...
Beavis: I wonder if I could major in Cornholio? Yeah! Yeah! That would be cool. I want to be Major Cornholio! That would kick ass!
Butthead: More like Major Dumbass. Huh huh. Huh huh.
Beavis: Hey! Screw you Butthead! Stop writing on my form!
A fight ensues, in which both Major Declaration forms are ripped to shreds...
I can understand the government's concern here. There is advanced Space Shuttle simulation software available for download on the internet. It even comes with a highly detailed Space Shuttle flight manual.
The most disturbing part is, nefarious organizations are willing to sell this top secret material to the the highest bidder. Just imagine if this were to fall into the hands of the terrorists.
I'm not sure what an Atari 2600 is. Probably some kind of NASA super computer...
Ah, but running Windows Vista Ultimate on your new machine will throttle the performance back down to 486 levels. That's why the prices are similar.
Sorry, I couldn't resist.
I have always pronounced it as "PU-36", but I had to double check it with the infallible wikipeda, just to be sure.
On my 2006 Mustang, the air conditioning controls are all digital. One of the buttons controls whether the AC air flow should recirculate the interior air, or pull the air from outside the car. The problem is, this button defaults to external air, and it doesn't save the previous value when you remove the key from the ignition. So, every time I start my car and want to use the AC, I always have to toggle the air intake button. I live in Arizona, where car AC is essential, and is used 6 months out of the year. I've probably pushed that damn air intake button over 500 times in the past year. I smell a class-action lawsuit for unnecessary finger strain. =P
When you're using the AC, whether for heating or cooling, that should imply you want the air temperature inside the car to be different than the air temperature outside the car, so pulling air from outside the car is a dumb default.
My other gripe involves Windows Update. I have it enabled to patch the multitude of security flaws in XP. It automatically downloads and installs security updates. OK, I can live with that. But then, when it's done installing, it displays a pop-up that says the computer will automatically restart in 5 minutes. If you press cancel, it will wait 10 minutes or so, and display the message again. I was in the middle of working on a major software project when I got this stupid message. I didn't want to waste the 15 minutes required to close out all my 20+ xterm windows, restart the system, reconnect to work, and open all my xterms again. So I spent the next 3 hours clicking the "cancel reboot" button every 10 minutes, until I finally got sick of it, and let the damn thing reboot. Great feature.
A simple "Don't remind me again" checkbox would have prevented this frustration.
Another nice side-effect of this feature is that if you step away from your computer for more than 10 minutes and a security update happens to come in while you're gone, you'll come back to a rebooted computer with no explanation.
I'm guessing Negroponte's main concern is volume. To drop the price of the laptop, they need to maximize volume of units produced. If Intel takes half, or more, of the "market" share, this will undermine OLPC's volume of scale.
Wow. That's really weird. I got a fortune cookie today, and the note inside said:
Wise is the man who backs up his media. Your lucky lottery numbers are: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
The use of the iPod is just a symptom. They have to go after the root cause if they want to solve this problem. Rather than making it illegal to cross the street while using an iPod, they should make it illegal to walk in front a speeding car, regardless of what you're doing when it happens. A stiff $100 fine would certainly be sufficient deterrent to keep me from walking in front of a speeding car.
allofmp3 was tempting, but I steered clear of it, exactly because of what is happening now. If the RIAA can get any traction with the US and Russian governements, this may result in a settlement. And you can bet that part of that settlement is going to be allofmp3 handing over a complete list all US credit card purchases. The RIAA could use this data to unleash a massive wave of lawsuits on US consumers who "shopped" on allofmp3, since they were essentially buying stolen goods. (Yes, I know, copyright violation is not the same as theft. But the RIAA thinks differently.)
When you deal with shady companies, don't expect them to protect your privacy. In fact, you should expect the opposite.
IAAP, or at least I have a psychology degree.
I would agree that some people are more prone to addictive behavior than others, and that the addictive people need help when their addiction gets to the point that it is interfering with their quality of life. Calling this addiction "Internet addiction" does sound more like a flashy news headline. However, in terms of treatment, the specific focus of the addiction obviously plays a factor. The therapy in this case would be two fold. First, you'd have to concentrate on reducing the patient's specific addiction, in this case to the internet. Then, you'd have to focus on the core addictive tendencies, so that the patient wouldn't just switch from internet addiction to some other addiction.
For clarification, your analogy of a child cleaning excessively is probably a bad example. Compulsive cleaning falls under obsessive compulsive behavior. OCD behaviors appear to have a physiological basis, at least in part. OCD also differs from internet addiction in that the behavior is often irrational, and provides no benefit to the individual. An internet addict at least gets some actual benefit out of his activities, by learning new things, or making friends online. A person that cleans their room for 5 hours straight gets no benefit, other than the misattributed pleasure of the cleaning experience, because their room was probably already completely organized and spotless when they started cleaning. In OCD cases that involve hand washing, the person will often wash their hands raw, resulting in injury and possible infection.
Pharmacological therapies are the most effective at helping OCD patients, combined with behavioral or cognative therapy. Internet addiction, on the other hand, would probably not require any medication, and could be resolved directly through behavioral or cognative therapy.
I think you misread the statistic. The quote from the article is:
They're only talking about "large aquatic mammals". According to Wikipedia's article on extinction:
That's many millions of species. A 50% extinction rate isn't anything to be proud of. If we take a more conservative estimate of only 25%, well, that's still wiping out a quarter of all known living things on the planet.
Since this is both a prediction and a statistic, it is open to wide speculation. I suggest doing a Google on "rate of extiction", and jugde the sources of the statistics for yourselves. Here's another interesting search result:
How's this for a little poetic justice:
The last species humanity will be credited with driving to extinction is itself.
What we really need is a game that joins the strengths of NWN with the strengths of Oblivion.
I only played NWN for a total of about 8 hours before giving up on it. It felt way too claustrophobic with the top-down viewing camera. It just wasn't immersive. One of the best immersive games I've ever played was Ultima 9. There is something to be said for a game that lets you pan your vision 360 degrees, especially when you're outside, looking at the night sky. I get the same feeling when playing Morrowind. That feeling is completely absent in NWN. It's the difference between just playing a game, and actually being in the game.
If the wonderful graphical elements of Oblivion, and it's immersive game play, could be married with the table-top Dungeon Master concepts of NWN, that would be the perfect RPG for me.
In fact, I see that as the final solution to all the weaknesses of MMORPGs. The biggest weakness of MMORPGS is repetition. If you had players controlling some of the monsters, and the most competent players controlling quests and plot twists, then you'd have a truly enjoyable online experience without any of the soul-crushing repetition. This is part of what NWN tried to achieve, though on a smaller scale than a full MMORPG. Unfortunately, the UI drove me away before I bothered to try playing a campaign online.
As for the graphics speed issues, I have my own solution for that, which the gaming industry surely hates. I tend to buy games about 2 years after they come out. I bought Morrowind last May, for $18. That included all the patch bug fixes, plus the two expansion packs. And even my old TI4200 video card is powerful enough to play that game at 1600 resolution with all settings maxed, making for a wonderful gaming experience. It's tough to wait on Oblivion, but I'll probably pick that up next year, when I upgrade my video card to something powerful enough to play Oblivion maxed. That would be the time I'd consider buying NWN2, but it sounds like it suffers from the same claustrophobia as the original. I'll have to try a demo before I'd consider picking it up.
Shoot a multi-thousand dollar SAM at a 100 dollar toy?
If the US military ever built one of these to military spec under a military contract, you can bet these "toys" would end up costing $100,000 each.
If you ever encounter someone who says something like "that rule is gay" and you confront them on it they'll always point out they don't mean it as a derogatory homosexual remark, and not because they're just some backpedaling racist, most kids don't even realize someone would take offense at it because to them it's wholly unrelated in their mind.
Okay, I think I understand your logic.
So, if one kid tells another kid "You're gay", they don't mean that as a derogatory homosexual remark, they're just saying the other kid is stupid.
And if the same kid says "You're queer", that's also not a derogatory homosexual remark either.
And if the kid says "You're a fag", same.
And if the kid says "You're a homo"...
There's a pattern forming here. Strange. Why is it that every word associated with gay seems to also be a synonym for "bad"?
The homophobic tendencies of WoW surely pale in comparison to Runescape. The average age of a Runescaper is around 14. In highschool and juniorhigh, "gay" is a common staple of the vernacular.
Runescape's censor filter automatically blocks the word gay entirely. However, the word "gae" is used so often by the general populace that I usually don't bother to report it. It is always used as a synonym for "bad"..
After some reflection on this story, I will ask the Runescape players saying "gae" to find another or risk being reported for the basic rule violation of intentionally bypassing the censor.
Something odd just occurred to me. Couldn't you CDR RAID an important archive? Similar to hardrive RAIDing, you could save the data bits across multiple CDRs, with an extra CDR for a checksum. Then, if any CDR failed, you could rebuild it from the others.
;)
Or you could just make 2 copies. But where's the fun in that?
CDR decay can be minimized by keeping the CDRs in an optimal storage environment. Some info about shelf life and optimal storage conditions can be found in the Wikipedia entry for CDRs. If you know if any other good links, please post them.
Another good idea is to share archive space with your relatives. I plan on sharing vital data with my parents and brother, things like digital audio recordings of my now late grandfather. That way, if one harddrive fails, I can retrieve the data from my relatives.