The things to consider are beyond what developers see a RDBMS for, but they include things like DR, management tools, and support (I assume developers see RDBMS as nothing more than a "persistence layer," and if that's offensive to you, then it's not directed at you). If you're paying Oracle (or MS, or IBM, etc) for licenses, its because of the value of the data they're storing is worth the cost of the licenses & support. For what it costs, Postgres is amazingly functional.

Operating system independence? I get that it may not be important TO YOU, but you're going to have a hard time downloading those SQL Server binaries for any Linux distro.

Oracle is free up to 10GB as well. You just don't get any of the patches or support, but who needs em? Relational data isn't all that valuable anyhow.

I'm a little surprised that nobody has mentioned using a decent NAS instead of a PC for your hardware already. A 4 bay NAS from QNAP or Synology would store your media and serve it up via Plex or some other DNLA server. The footprint is small enough that all of the good points about not putting expensive electronics in a crawlspace become moot. HTH

Frankly, with all of the job experience on the OP's resume, a degree mill is not a bad way to get a legitimate line on the resume. I had an associates degree, went to the local branch of the state university, and realized I'd be graduating with my kids if I stuck with that route. I sucked it up, plunked down the money to buy my degree in 15 months worth of classes, and now HR departments everywhere will pass that portion of the resume filter.

As far as the original requirements - fast, cheap, accredited, you may pick any 2.

One way you can lighten the financial burden is to get hired full time by a company that offers tuition reimbursement.

They do this with watches too, but in my experience, they break the day after you buy them.

It would be difficult/impossible to ignore, so a different strategy is in order.

My credentials:

My autistic son has something similar - http://www.projectlifesaver.org/ - and the trick was to get him to look forward to having it on. A week or so before we received the bracelet, we started talking about how he was getting a special watch. He shows it off to basically anybody who will talk to him now, which may be a bit annoying, but is worth the peace of mind should he ever wander off.

Wait - is the combination 1, 2, 3, 4, 5?

Is that a positive or a negative impact? If we don't know the effect, then how can we possibly say whether it is for our benefit or to our detriment?

Yes. Let's roll back the last 10,000 years or so of agriculture, as it "messes" with ecology. I'm not so sure the ~7 billion people on Earth today would be sustained by this, but it's more ecologically sound not to farm, so let's do it. Those whose childrens' children who manage to survive will thank us for our sacrifice.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for not taking more than what I need in the interest of sustainability for others or eating fish without toxic levels of mercury, but inconvenient half-truths deserve to be called out as such.

Ecology is about the relationship of organisms to the environment. Do humans have an effect? Of course, so do koala bears. My point is that it's impossible not to mess with the ecosystem in which you live. Living implies having an impact on said ecosystem. Understanding that impact won't prevent it. It is a cold, hard fact that a population cannot outgrow its food supply.

It's probably safe to say we're headed towards a mass extinction event, and none of the previous ones (generally believed to be 5 of them, AFAIK) weren't caused by humans, as humans hadn't existed yet. That leaves external stimuli, such as the Sun as a strong potential contributor to climate change. Forgetting that humans have never caused a mass extinction before, let's entertain the idea that we have the ability to cause one. How long can the current rate of consumption of resources & population growth continue before something bad happens? Do we have levers that can effectively extend that time? What if Canada and Siberia warm up enough to support even MORE farming than we can today? Perhaps the food supply can grow enough that the population explosion can be supported.

I'm not sure about the consequences. We've seen/heard of FBI raids against DDOS participants when the target is Western financial services, but does law enforcement care at all when Anons mess with Iranian or other rogue states' sites? I'd imagine that the legality is the same in either instance, so it's really the response that I'm concerned with.

RTFM. Matthew 24:36.

Even if the world does happen to end tomorrow, it's not because this kook knew it.

Useless?

Hubble
ISS
30 years of research

Lack of new stimuli? How about an entire society living in microgravity for a couple of hundred millenia? Assuming members of the million mile high club can reproduce successfully, competitive advantages are going to be significantly different. Have you seen WALL-E? If reproduction doesn't work, or we want to be fit to inhabit a planet where gravity exists, we'll probably be stuck with trusting HAL9000.

I think the confusion here is that the operation was authorized a week ago. It didn't happen immediately. I believe I saw/heard a report that there was a rehearsal done by the team before the actual op.

I think you're giving Congress a bit more credit than they deserve. Lobbyists write the laws, and members of Congress add riders to the laws appropriating money for some project in their district in order to get reelected by a populace that they failed to represent when they introduced the lobbyists' handiwork.

It's working perfectly, just like the Framers intended.

Well, not exactly unregulated, but unless you're specific about what sort of regulations you feel are missing, the rest of this is purely pedantic. It's much more of a clusterfuck than that. For instance, I count 42 states (well, 41 + a District) here. As a former employee of PayPal's AML Compliance department, I can tell you that paypal is regulated (AML/CTF - not consumer protection regulations which is probably what you're bitching about) in the US (FinCEN), Canada (FinTRAC), Australia (AusTRAC), China (HK Police) the EU (CSSF) and anywhere outside of that in Singapore (MAS). A year ago when I left, there was talk of adding legal entities in 4 or 5 other countries, primarily in Asia and Latin America.

To the GP's point about why PayPal is not a bank (in the US anyhow), is that US banks issue credit and US money service businesses merely move money. I would certainly concede that the Bill Me Later unit of PayPal is operates purely on the technicality of the laws and/or regulations that separate banks from MSBs (BML makes a decision on whether to extend credit, then a bank issues the credit with the understanding that BML will buy the debt a few days later). There was often talk of becoming a bank, or at least chartering a subsidiary bank in order to allow the credit issuing to move completely in house. Ebay divesting Skype was supposedly a part of that plan, although I never understood why, nor can I say whether PayPal is any closer to becoming (or more likely starting) a bank. More of what PayPal does falls under the EU's legal definition of a bank, so PayPal is a bank there.