I understand the importance of having office applications but like how porn pushes technological advances, I think that gaming pushes the desktop.

Having a Linux desktop at work will not make the average user install Linux at home. The other way around, maybe...

I hate that Linux has such bad graphical card support. Games are the only thing that are keeping me on the Windows platform. I think it really is the only thing that is keeping the world from a "Linux on the desktop" utopia.

Ah right, thanks for that.

I _really_ don't get it.. Sony, a _Japanese_ company, and the US is going world police cop. I understand that Hollywood has a stake in this perhaps, but what political reason are they using to legitimize this?!

1) Espionage is anything but cost-effective. But cost isn't the primary (or even secondary) concern there for those who want to do the spying. (It's (technical) feasibility)

2) Running cable above ground is _always_ more cost-effective then running cable underground. So if you:
- don't give a shit about your customers
- don't have a lot of competition because you can gain a monopoly by buying senators
- and if you do a bare minimum of maintenance because you want more money (more so if you _do_ run cables underground)
then even in a city, local power stability is going to be shit.

If you think 250TB of backup is a lot, then you don't need tape.

I currently backup about 1PB and data storage is growing exponentially here (gene sequencing data). Tape is the only cost effective solution for us.

I do agree though that tapedrives are ridiculously expensive but it's a sellers market. Tapedrives don't sell in massive quantities so the price stays up, mainly because there just aren't that many suppliers.

On the other hand. I called a shop a while ago to see what they'd give for our 5x LTO4 tapedrives since we upgraded to LTO6 and they only offered us 30 euros per drive. So if you don't need the latest drive out there, you can save a lot of money by buying second-hand.

It's true that renewable power levels like wind-power rise and fall, but once you look at a larger area then it pretty much evens out.

Of course you can back it up with other types of renewable that have a more stable output like hydro-electric of geothermal.

For one, the US is big.. really big.. So it's not cost-effective to run power cables and alike underground. So that makes them more vulnerable.

Also, the US enjoys a form of super-capitalism, where the almighty dollar stands above things like quality of service and stability. So companies do the bare minimum of maintenance, also worsening outages.

[haha.jpg]

What pisses me off as a consumer is that Microsoft patches never come with any kind of useful information.

"There are X patches available", and when you click a specific patch you get "This is a stability patch for Windows 8" or something generic like that.

How can a consumer make an informed decision to go ahead and install patches or not without hours of looking up KB numbers?

I'd like more info, so that unless a patch specifically fixes a security bug, I'd rather leave the rest of the patches uninstalled as long as my system runs ok.

I use it, it's pretty popular in the Netherlands. However I am looking for an alternative.. But not Telegram (which seems to be picking up a lot of refuguees).

I would love something open source, so I'm going to have a look at Wazapp (a.ka. OpenWhatsapp). Anybody have any experience with it?

Yes, because a site breach wasn't annoying enough yet when they take all of the passwords. Let's give them more information which to do spearphising with.

I think the US has lost all its credibility in the world since it became known where all of the 'credible documents' about Iraq came from. I'll believe there were chemical weapons used but most likely it was the rebels, trying to get other countries involved in their war.

Also, as a European, I'm getting ever so tired of hearing how 'America is the policeman of the world'. Why not let the Middle East countries clean up their own mess for once? The added bonus being a lot less angry Muslims giving the US the stinkeye.

Homer: “Don't worry, baby, the tube'll know what to do.”

He takes her form, puts it into a canister, and sends it through the pneumatic tube system. The canister takes a wild ride through the tube system, eventually being deposited... outside, where a nearby beaver collects it and adds it to a dam built entirely of message canisters.