My Dodge Durango with a Hemi in it gets the same gas mileage as a Ford Fusion. Next excuse please. The gas mileage vehicles get has NOT gone up, it's just leveled out across the board. A Honda civic gets the same gas mileage as a Hundai Santa Fe. Size doesn't matter, or so it seems.
It's really amazing when people do the math. 70MP/H in my durango is 1500 RPM, 70MP/H in my wife's Fusion is 2100 RPM. The problem isn't the engines, it's the transmissions and the lack of "deep cruising" gears.
Stupidity is about as futile of a war as the war on drugs or war on terrorism. There will always be all of these things. Waging wars on these things is just like flushing cash down the toilet. Might i remind you about how much we've spent on the war on drugs? How about the parts of Arizona that are "recommended that US citizens not go into" because the drug cartels are invading and using it for drug routes from Mexico? Seems that war is going great for us too...
Take out a village, we take a city, take out a bus, we take out an airport. It's simply scale. We have to do some dick-swinging to prove that we ARE a global power, otherwise we might as well be, erm, Greece, only bigger.
Collateral Damage. Tell that to the Japanese who saw the two largest bombs dropped on them in history. Same thing. They might not want a war, but someone in their ranks did, which makes them "collateral damage".
Sucks to be them. Poke the giant, and not expect to get swatted is plain stupid. Quite honestly, i'm very surprised that the US didn't have the testicular fortitude to do it again. IMO, they should've turned iraq/bagdad into a parking lot 5 years ago. The "humanitarian" in me would even give them a little warning... say 3-4 hours. Just let them know it's coming, get out of the way... if you don't, oh well, call our bluff, we dare you.
But no, instead of making sure we're okay at home, we had to rebuild the nation in our image (not theirs mind you). Nor did they want it. So be it, we should've got the hell out of there as quick as we came in. Should have MAYBE taken 6 months to wipe the terrorists off the map (yes, with collateral damage)... not ten years.
As for the "victims" of the 9/11 war, hey, they started it, what did they expect? We'd roll over and take it? No sir, Fuck You. I have every right to live just as much as you do. Just because i don't agree with your religion nor subscribe to it, i should not be allowed to live? Hmmm... Yet, the Arab nations do still live by "eye for an eye" law, yet we're the evil ones because of collateral damage.
You guys do realize that EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) was replaced by EAS in 1997, and is now being replaced by CAP (Common Alerting Protocol)...
Guess nobody does pay attention to them when they blast em out of the radio or TV...
The reason it *CAN* soon go to mobile devices is because CAP is an IP based distribution system instead of an "over the air" distribution system.
They've been crying wolf for a decade about this. If they'd stop issuing 16 MILLION ip addresses to companies with no viable reason for offices to not use private/NAT addresses, this wouldn't be an issue. How about talking to some of those original companies that got issued/8's? HP now has 2(!!!)/8's in their control. (DEC/Compaq's and their own initial allocation) I doubt a company (even HP) can justify 32 million IPs. Or how about the US DoD? 7(!!!!!)/8's in their control. I find it hard to believe that even the government, who is all about conservation of resources you know, wouldn't be able to use a few different 10.0.0.0/8 networks globally and such.:) (c'mon 112 MILLION ip addresses just for the DoD?! LEARN2NAT ALREADY! Individual missiles do NOT need a public IP address!)
Pretty sure the prior art goes back waaaaaay beyond 2004. 3Dfx was out of buisness by the time this patent was filed.
In other news, the fastest counterclaim lawsuit has been filed by any/all video card manufacturers in business before 2004.
So, uh, good for the courts to uphold the fines, but the punitive damages are a little obscene, don't you think? Lets do some cypherin' shall we?
4,366,386 * 100 = $436,638,600 in fines, plus what? a few grand in court fees and filing fees?
So the punitive damages caused to Facebook was $632,290,121.46?! Did it really cause that much damage? Or is this FBs new business model to actually turn a profit?
I think i can clean up a few million spam messages for $632 million bucks... and i won't charge facebook a dime of that.;)
The problem with wifi phones is battery life. Most retail ones suck. Cisco made a cordless wifi sip phone that works rather well, about 100 bucks on the bay. Even the suggestion of an android phone is bad because of this same problem, if not worse.
In a word, GTFO. They're already trying to do this with radio and the fairness doctrine, and now trying to regulate reporters and journalists. I guess the only way to control the masses is to silence the masses. Though it could happen, the US is home to 7 (3 of which are at military installations?) of the 13 root servers. Pretty easy to just shut those down.
Anyone feel like china/north korea yet?
Maybe the machines were sold to the Casino under the guarantee that the machines would *NEVER* hit a jackpot, which is why the machine was handed over to the gaming commission in the first place, that's the bug!
I think it's funny that you referenced living with your parents.
There is no second-hand smoke inside a smokers machine. All the legalities that define second-hand smoke are a proximity to the person with a LIT cigarette/tobacco product. Nicotine on the other hand is a dangerous poison. I can understand putting on a "cleanup" surcharge for a nasty disgusting computer, but voiding their warranty because of it? No. Apple should then REFUND the warranty price because it's not specifically mentioned in the contract, and with this, they've just failed to meet their end of the contract.
As for not letting smokers smoke in resteraunts or bars, that's a personal property issue you damn treehuggers need to get off your horse about. Nobody forced you to walk into a smoke filled bar and sit down with your family there. Most bars out there installed filter systems that will filter out damn near everything. The air you breathe in a bar with one of these machines is probably cleaner than just standing outside. Again, it's a private business, the government has no right to tell me what i can and cannot do on my personal property. (but it'd appear that nobody has the stones to challenge the constitutionality of these bans)
I would like heathcare **OR** broadband from a provider that **I** choose. Not something the government decides is "best" for me. Or decide that, oh, well, you smoke, and drink, therefore we're not going to treat your colon cancer, you need hospice, not surgery. Or how about the other side of the coin? I can't afford private insurance, so i'll get it from the Government. Seems simple right? Well, the old saying goes "no such thing as a free lunch". Your neighbor just paid for your colonoscopy.
See, this crazy choice thing, not so bad! If i want better broadband, healthcare, corrective colon surgery, I CAN.
You may be willing to pay higher taxes to help pay for the under-priveleged, but hey, i'm suddenly under-privleged too even though i make $50k a year, so... uh, thanks!
NetRatings a few years ago was a seperate entity, i vaugely remember the email about aquiring netratings. I2 though is structured so differently and unlike the TV ratings side of things, they only have a working app for windows xp/vista. The mac one barely works right (since it's java), and there is NO unix variant. Quite a large chunk of people left out in the cold if you ask me. (even though i do remember them saying WHY there wasn't any for unix, market share is nil in comparison)
200k sample is actually pretty small in the Internet space. Compared to the national TV sample. (NTI) Glad to hear that the I2 system took off pretty well though. The first version of the software they showed us in Oldsmar was pretty... erm... bad. (much like MSM:P )
The Vsync is TV on/off... the speaker tap is the secret. The broadcast station has a Nielsen box too! They're encoding their SID codes in the audio chain for the Nielsen boxes to listen for out in the world. Everything is audio driven with Nielsen's boxes nowdays. The old Mk2 equipment was MUCH MUCH more intrusive, but IMO more accurate, since it tapped the physical tuners of the sets. (either I2C or an actual high frequency probe inside the tuner can!)
On flat panel sets, they have a current sensing relay on the power cord and everything is driven off audio.
I used to work for Nielsen as a field rep. The way they gather the data is solid, but they have some serious issues with quality control. Meaning too much QC. If the power goes out in one section of the home, and the box is reset, the whole days viewing data is thrown out for the WHOLE household. They should just throw out that one viewing site. As for DVRs, the article fails to mention that Nielsen already accounts for DVRs, quite well I might add. It's live+7 days. Meaning that if you recorded tuesdays american idol, and didn't watch it til sunday, it still counts for tuesdays viewing data. How it deals with the nightly numbers was a bit above my pay grade, but i think the DVR equipment tracked the SID codes while it was recording.
Biggest problem Nielsen really has is internet usage. They just (like 3 years ago) started tracking internet sites with their A2M2 program. The sample is very very small, about 1/5th the size of a TV sample. And a lot of the households are former TV sample homes. (they offer them the I2 program as the home comes out of the LPM sample) They also now are able to track distance family members, like kids at college are counted now away from home, but count as part of the household. (figure that one out if the parents live in Minneapolis, and the kid goes to school in LA?)
As for people wondering why Nielsen is a viable company in this digital age? Simple demographics. Nielsen has every household members income, job title, where they work, shopping habits, age, etc. The cable company can find out what a person is watching through an STB, but doesn't have ANY of the demographics of the household. Nielsen using LPM systems can tell you EXACTLY who was watching what at a specific time, including the persons age, wine buying habits, primary shopper in the home or not, and what kind of car(year, make, model) they drive. (yes, these were the questions i had to ask households every 3 months) Obscene target audiences. Even with the old NSI sample, Nielsen had more data than the cable companies. (NSI is total household data, LPM is persons data)
For those really wondering, Nielsen does track homes that pirate satellite/cable. They just don't show that number anywhere.:)
Um, this guy lives in central Minnesota. The temp average this past week was -10 degrees. Of anyone, he would know what snow/fog/rain is... That is to say, St. Johns University isn't really known for turning out good scientists.
Another key item nobody is noticing is that a LOT of people think that with the impending doom of analog TV, that they need a new HD set... and quite a few big (yellow) stores are telling people exactly that. Other cases are that the man in the house sees it as a good excuse to get his new flat panel for football season, but forgets to tell the wife about the converter boxes for $60 (speaking of, thanks uncle sam for kicking in the $40, but you may have wanted to PRICE FIX THAT!)
Fourth, anyone who believes that Exxon makes excessive profits is a moron. 11.68 billion on 138.07 billion of revenue- 8.45% profit. That's considered an average profit in the business world.
Very true, just ask oracle about their 25+% profits... How about monster cable? Cost of a 6ft HDMI cable is roughly $4.60 (product, packaging, shipping, etc)... But somehow it's worth $100???
Wow, the opinions around here, maybe everyone here should run for office, can't be any worse than who you've elected in your respective city/state.
On the other note, letting the oil sit in the ground now, importing from saudi america at an inflated rate may hurt now, but they're almost dry (give it 10 years)... Now, think about this... When they're all dried up, and china has an overly hungry appetite for oil, they'll come knockin for ours... And well, see, politicians like countries/companies with money, lots and lots of money.:)
Don't worry, we'll drill, eventually... unfortunately it won't be for domestic consumption.
FreeNAS is a freebsd based NAS software solution. I use it here at home. For the lower power side of the world, i use a VIA EPIA 533Mhz with a 2-PCI slot riser card. Mobo only draws about 20w. I have 6x 500gb drives attached to it via a 4ch IDE PCI card (old promise controller i had laying around) and 2x on the onboard. Use a 128mb CF to IDE adapter for the "OS" and a DVD ROM drive for serving up DVD data content (usually images of OS's for net-installs). Granted it has a 600w PSU in it, and I mad a custom enclosure for it, but it runs headless sitting under the stairs in the basement. Also has GigE card for a whooping 20 bucks. Works just peachy.
500gb drives can be had for about $80/ea if you dig, and the EPIA 533 boards are about 80 bucks as well. The riser card i had laying around from another project. You don't need horsepower to serve and backup data at home. 533Mhz, copying 20gb of data across a gig-e network takes about 20 minutes, which isn't horrible.
Freenas also has a UPnP server built into it, so it serves up my media around the home. (works fantastic with the PS3 and the D-Link DSM-320/520)
Been told you can hack it to work with Xbox 360s as well.
When i worked at (and help build) a datacenter back in 2000, they planned for just about everything. Then they played the whatif game for a few more scenarios, and came up with the fact that they needed to double the main capacity, and add a second layer. By that i mean that if the main transfer switch on the genset failed, there was a second one that'd kick in. If one or 2 (or all 3) of the A/C units failed for some reason, there was #4 and #5 which could carry the load with acceptable tolerances.
We also had the genset in parallel to the UPS. So when the UPS got down to around 60%, the genset would kick in, and power them back up to 85% and shut down again. There was also 2 more gensets on site for just A/C and other essential systems. (We also learned the hard way how A/C compressors really dislike genset power, and had to get a very expensive line smoother from the power company to make the bigger ones play nice.)
Someone did the math on this system once. The datacenter could sustain itself without outside power for 51 days(!!) running at 70% capacity.
Not to mention, we ran the datacenter once a month for 6 hours on backup systems just to test. Then again, my boss at the time was the type of guy who would pull a card out of a router to see if said router (at that point in time, a Cisco 7513) was hot swap... Live router, had our SONET stuff running through it... Luckily it is a hot-swap router.:)
Because, sir, if you give a man $200, you feed him for half a week. If you keep up the hegemony status of that man's nation, and use a successful war to spur on the economy (as successful wars always do), you feed him for a lifetime. This also takes into consideration that we would use the WHOLE $60BN to do so, leaving national intel with nothing.
This would also require this war to be successful. Right now we're about breaking even... and with the upcoming influx of troops, i would have to say we're starting to lose. (day late, dollar short... pardon the pun) This does NOT help the economy. $60BN on intel? Seems like it really should be more... look at what type of "spy" satellites have become declassified in the past 10 years... They have cameras that can tell you your balding from 40 miles up! You mean to tell me those were cheap? I don't think so.
If you're offered a job with the status of 24/7 oncall (like an admin or engineer) tell them for starters you'll take $7.00/hour plus benefits. They pay you $7.00/hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, works out to $61,320/yr. Not bad for slightly better than min wage.:) Or whatever floats your boat... This would though negate any overtime, since you're paid 24/7.
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My Dodge Durango with a Hemi in it gets the same gas mileage as a Ford Fusion. Next excuse please. The gas mileage vehicles get has NOT gone up, it's just leveled out across the board. A Honda civic gets the same gas mileage as a Hundai Santa Fe. Size doesn't matter, or so it seems.
It's really amazing when people do the math. 70MP/H in my durango is 1500 RPM, 70MP/H in my wife's Fusion is 2100 RPM. The problem isn't the engines, it's the transmissions and the lack of "deep cruising" gears.
Stupidity is about as futile of a war as the war on drugs or war on terrorism. There will always be all of these things. Waging wars on these things is just like flushing cash down the toilet. Might i remind you about how much we've spent on the war on drugs? How about the parts of Arizona that are "recommended that US citizens not go into" because the drug cartels are invading and using it for drug routes from Mexico? Seems that war is going great for us too...
Take out a village, we take a city, take out a bus, we take out an airport. It's simply scale. We have to do some dick-swinging to prove that we ARE a global power, otherwise we might as well be, erm, Greece, only bigger.
Collateral Damage. Tell that to the Japanese who saw the two largest bombs dropped on them in history. Same thing. They might not want a war, but someone in their ranks did, which makes them "collateral damage".
Sucks to be them. Poke the giant, and not expect to get swatted is plain stupid. Quite honestly, i'm very surprised that the US didn't have the testicular fortitude to do it again. IMO, they should've turned iraq/bagdad into a parking lot 5 years ago. The "humanitarian" in me would even give them a little warning... say 3-4 hours. Just let them know it's coming, get out of the way... if you don't, oh well, call our bluff, we dare you.
But no, instead of making sure we're okay at home, we had to rebuild the nation in our image (not theirs mind you). Nor did they want it. So be it, we should've got the hell out of there as quick as we came in. Should have MAYBE taken 6 months to wipe the terrorists off the map (yes, with collateral damage)... not ten years.
As for the "victims" of the 9/11 war, hey, they started it, what did they expect? We'd roll over and take it? No sir, Fuck You. I have every right to live just as much as you do. Just because i don't agree with your religion nor subscribe to it, i should not be allowed to live? Hmmm... Yet, the Arab nations do still live by "eye for an eye" law, yet we're the evil ones because of collateral damage.
You guys do realize that EBS (Emergency Broadcast System) was replaced by EAS in 1997, and is now being replaced by CAP (Common Alerting Protocol)... Guess nobody does pay attention to them when they blast em out of the radio or TV... The reason it *CAN* soon go to mobile devices is because CAP is an IP based distribution system instead of an "over the air" distribution system.
They've been crying wolf for a decade about this. If they'd stop issuing 16 MILLION ip addresses to companies with no viable reason for offices to not use private/NAT addresses, this wouldn't be an issue. How about talking to some of those original companies that got issued /8's? HP now has 2(!!!) /8's in their control. (DEC/Compaq's and their own initial allocation) I doubt a company (even HP) can justify 32 million IPs. Or how about the US DoD? 7(!!!!!) /8's in their control. I find it hard to believe that even the government, who is all about conservation of resources you know, wouldn't be able to use a few different 10.0.0.0/8 networks globally and such. :) (c'mon 112 MILLION ip addresses just for the DoD?! LEARN2NAT ALREADY! Individual missiles do NOT need a public IP address!)
Pretty sure the prior art goes back waaaaaay beyond 2004. 3Dfx was out of buisness by the time this patent was filed. In other news, the fastest counterclaim lawsuit has been filed by any/all video card manufacturers in business before 2004.
So, uh, good for the courts to uphold the fines, but the punitive damages are a little obscene, don't you think? Lets do some cypherin' shall we? 4,366,386 * 100 = $436,638,600 in fines, plus what? a few grand in court fees and filing fees? So the punitive damages caused to Facebook was $632,290,121.46?! Did it really cause that much damage? Or is this FBs new business model to actually turn a profit? I think i can clean up a few million spam messages for $632 million bucks... and i won't charge facebook a dime of that. ;)
The problem with wifi phones is battery life. Most retail ones suck. Cisco made a cordless wifi sip phone that works rather well, about 100 bucks on the bay. Even the suggestion of an android phone is bad because of this same problem, if not worse.
In a word, GTFO. They're already trying to do this with radio and the fairness doctrine, and now trying to regulate reporters and journalists. I guess the only way to control the masses is to silence the masses. Though it could happen, the US is home to 7 (3 of which are at military installations?) of the 13 root servers. Pretty easy to just shut those down. Anyone feel like china/north korea yet?
Maybe the machines were sold to the Casino under the guarantee that the machines would *NEVER* hit a jackpot, which is why the machine was handed over to the gaming commission in the first place, that's the bug!
Climate Change is real... This climate is called WINTER. The next change we'll experience is called SPRING... Move along Folks, nothing to see here.
I think it's funny that you referenced living with your parents.
There is no second-hand smoke inside a smokers machine. All the legalities that define second-hand smoke are a proximity to the person with a LIT cigarette/tobacco product. Nicotine on the other hand is a dangerous poison. I can understand putting on a "cleanup" surcharge for a nasty disgusting computer, but voiding their warranty because of it? No. Apple should then REFUND the warranty price because it's not specifically mentioned in the contract, and with this, they've just failed to meet their end of the contract.
As for not letting smokers smoke in resteraunts or bars, that's a personal property issue you damn treehuggers need to get off your horse about. Nobody forced you to walk into a smoke filled bar and sit down with your family there. Most bars out there installed filter systems that will filter out damn near everything. The air you breathe in a bar with one of these machines is probably cleaner than just standing outside. Again, it's a private business, the government has no right to tell me what i can and cannot do on my personal property. (but it'd appear that nobody has the stones to challenge the constitutionality of these bans)
Now get off my lawn.
I would like heathcare **OR** broadband from a provider that **I** choose. Not something the government decides is "best" for me. Or decide that, oh, well, you smoke, and drink, therefore we're not going to treat your colon cancer, you need hospice, not surgery. Or how about the other side of the coin? I can't afford private insurance, so i'll get it from the Government. Seems simple right? Well, the old saying goes "no such thing as a free lunch". Your neighbor just paid for your colonoscopy. See, this crazy choice thing, not so bad! If i want better broadband, healthcare, corrective colon surgery, I CAN. You may be willing to pay higher taxes to help pay for the under-priveleged, but hey, i'm suddenly under-privleged too even though i make $50k a year, so... uh, thanks!
NetRatings a few years ago was a seperate entity, i vaugely remember the email about aquiring netratings. I2 though is structured so differently and unlike the TV ratings side of things, they only have a working app for windows xp/vista. The mac one barely works right (since it's java), and there is NO unix variant. Quite a large chunk of people left out in the cold if you ask me. (even though i do remember them saying WHY there wasn't any for unix, market share is nil in comparison)
:P )
200k sample is actually pretty small in the Internet space. Compared to the national TV sample. (NTI) Glad to hear that the I2 system took off pretty well though. The first version of the software they showed us in Oldsmar was pretty... erm... bad. (much like MSM
The Vsync is TV on/off... the speaker tap is the secret. The broadcast station has a Nielsen box too! They're encoding their SID codes in the audio chain for the Nielsen boxes to listen for out in the world. Everything is audio driven with Nielsen's boxes nowdays. The old Mk2 equipment was MUCH MUCH more intrusive, but IMO more accurate, since it tapped the physical tuners of the sets. (either I2C or an actual high frequency probe inside the tuner can!) On flat panel sets, they have a current sensing relay on the power cord and everything is driven off audio.
I used to work for Nielsen as a field rep. The way they gather the data is solid, but they have some serious issues with quality control. Meaning too much QC. If the power goes out in one section of the home, and the box is reset, the whole days viewing data is thrown out for the WHOLE household. They should just throw out that one viewing site. As for DVRs, the article fails to mention that Nielsen already accounts for DVRs, quite well I might add. It's live+7 days. Meaning that if you recorded tuesdays american idol, and didn't watch it til sunday, it still counts for tuesdays viewing data. How it deals with the nightly numbers was a bit above my pay grade, but i think the DVR equipment tracked the SID codes while it was recording.
:)
Biggest problem Nielsen really has is internet usage. They just (like 3 years ago) started tracking internet sites with their A2M2 program. The sample is very very small, about 1/5th the size of a TV sample. And a lot of the households are former TV sample homes. (they offer them the I2 program as the home comes out of the LPM sample) They also now are able to track distance family members, like kids at college are counted now away from home, but count as part of the household. (figure that one out if the parents live in Minneapolis, and the kid goes to school in LA?)
As for people wondering why Nielsen is a viable company in this digital age? Simple demographics. Nielsen has every household members income, job title, where they work, shopping habits, age, etc. The cable company can find out what a person is watching through an STB, but doesn't have ANY of the demographics of the household. Nielsen using LPM systems can tell you EXACTLY who was watching what at a specific time, including the persons age, wine buying habits, primary shopper in the home or not, and what kind of car(year, make, model) they drive. (yes, these were the questions i had to ask households every 3 months) Obscene target audiences. Even with the old NSI sample, Nielsen had more data than the cable companies. (NSI is total household data, LPM is persons data)
For those really wondering, Nielsen does track homes that pirate satellite/cable. They just don't show that number anywhere.
Um, this guy lives in central Minnesota. The temp average this past week was -10 degrees. Of anyone, he would know what snow/fog/rain is... That is to say, St. Johns University isn't really known for turning out good scientists.
Another key item nobody is noticing is that a LOT of people think that with the impending doom of analog TV, that they need a new HD set... and quite a few big (yellow) stores are telling people exactly that. Other cases are that the man in the house sees it as a good excuse to get his new flat panel for football season, but forgets to tell the wife about the converter boxes for $60 (speaking of, thanks uncle sam for kicking in the $40, but you may have wanted to PRICE FIX THAT!)
Fourth, anyone who believes that Exxon makes excessive profits is a moron. 11.68 billion on 138.07 billion of revenue- 8.45% profit. That's considered an average profit in the business world.
Very true, just ask oracle about their 25+% profits... How about monster cable? Cost of a 6ft HDMI cable is roughly $4.60 (product, packaging, shipping, etc)... But somehow it's worth $100???
Wow, the opinions around here, maybe everyone here should run for office, can't be any worse than who you've elected in your respective city/state.
:)
On the other note, letting the oil sit in the ground now, importing from saudi america at an inflated rate may hurt now, but they're almost dry (give it 10 years)... Now, think about this... When they're all dried up, and china has an overly hungry appetite for oil, they'll come knockin for ours... And well, see, politicians like countries/companies with money, lots and lots of money.
Don't worry, we'll drill, eventually... unfortunately it won't be for domestic consumption.
FreeNAS is a freebsd based NAS software solution. I use it here at home. For the lower power side of the world, i use a VIA EPIA 533Mhz with a 2-PCI slot riser card. Mobo only draws about 20w. I have 6x 500gb drives attached to it via a 4ch IDE PCI card (old promise controller i had laying around) and 2x on the onboard. Use a 128mb CF to IDE adapter for the "OS" and a DVD ROM drive for serving up DVD data content (usually images of OS's for net-installs). Granted it has a 600w PSU in it, and I mad a custom enclosure for it, but it runs headless sitting under the stairs in the basement. Also has GigE card for a whooping 20 bucks. Works just peachy. 500gb drives can be had for about $80/ea if you dig, and the EPIA 533 boards are about 80 bucks as well. The riser card i had laying around from another project. You don't need horsepower to serve and backup data at home. 533Mhz, copying 20gb of data across a gig-e network takes about 20 minutes, which isn't horrible. Freenas also has a UPnP server built into it, so it serves up my media around the home. (works fantastic with the PS3 and the D-Link DSM-320/520) Been told you can hack it to work with Xbox 360s as well.
When i worked at (and help build) a datacenter back in 2000, they planned for just about everything. Then they played the whatif game for a few more scenarios, and came up with the fact that they needed to double the main capacity, and add a second layer. By that i mean that if the main transfer switch on the genset failed, there was a second one that'd kick in. If one or 2 (or all 3) of the A/C units failed for some reason, there was #4 and #5 which could carry the load with acceptable tolerances.
:)
We also had the genset in parallel to the UPS. So when the UPS got down to around 60%, the genset would kick in, and power them back up to 85% and shut down again. There was also 2 more gensets on site for just A/C and other essential systems. (We also learned the hard way how A/C compressors really dislike genset power, and had to get a very expensive line smoother from the power company to make the bigger ones play nice.)
Someone did the math on this system once. The datacenter could sustain itself without outside power for 51 days(!!) running at 70% capacity.
Not to mention, we ran the datacenter once a month for 6 hours on backup systems just to test. Then again, my boss at the time was the type of guy who would pull a card out of a router to see if said router (at that point in time, a Cisco 7513) was hot swap... Live router, had our SONET stuff running through it... Luckily it is a hot-swap router.
This would also require this war to be successful. Right now we're about breaking even... and with the upcoming influx of troops, i would have to say we're starting to lose. (day late, dollar short... pardon the pun) This does NOT help the economy. $60BN on intel? Seems like it really should be more... look at what type of "spy" satellites have become declassified in the past 10 years... They have cameras that can tell you your balding from 40 miles up! You mean to tell me those were cheap? I don't think so.
If you're offered a job with the status of 24/7 oncall (like an admin or engineer) tell them for starters you'll take $7.00/hour plus benefits. They pay you $7.00/hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, works out to $61,320/yr. Not bad for slightly better than min wage. :) Or whatever floats your boat... This would though negate any overtime, since you're paid 24/7.