You probably can't find one, any more, but I bought a used HP ScanJet 5, and installed BSD on it. This page has a lot of info on the process: http://www.berklix.com/scanjet/

It's still working far better than any other scanner I've used.

I'd like a way to use these "cloud" storage services to make a really safe encrypted filesystem. Imagine that 95% of my data was on my own fileserver, but a critical 5% of the data was only stored on a "cloud" server (mirrored across several, for safety and performance). The FBI confiscates my server and a judge orders me to give them the passwords. "Fine," I say, "the password is 'pass1234,' good luck!"

You could probably do something with RAID-5 over loop-mounted files to simulate this, but I'm not sure that would necessarily ensure that no files were recoverable without access the off-site part.

I think this a very realistic and worrying possibility. I can easily imagine a scenario:

Workday runs Payroll for hundreds of customers in a single environment. Each company has its own "tenant," but all the data is stored, together, in Workday's one big in-memory database. Workday is entirely responsible for backups, disaster recovery, etc.

Assume your company uses Workday for payroll services. Now imagine that some other company that is also using Workday is using fake employees in the Payroll system to launder money. We all know "money laundering" is all the FBI really cares about, so they eventually figure out this is happening. What is keeping the FBI from shutting down Workday, entirely? If they do shut Workday down, I'll bet your company will be destroyed by the fact it can't pay it's employees, and by the penalties the IRS will impose when you can't file your taxes.

I MISS btrsf!

I had a home server with 6TB of disk using btrfs and a second server with the same amount of disk, also using btrfs for backup. I had a power failure while the rsync backup was running, and both btrfs filesytems were mangled. I managed to recover most of the stuff after a couple days' worth of work, but I definitely changed back to xfs on LVM2.

Btrfs was so much simpler, and I was able to maintain > 60 Mb/s write speeds to a set of crapy disks that only manage 12-14 Mb/s writes, now. I know I could RAID my disks to get back to those speeds, but with btrfs I was able to grow my server by replacing one disk at a time. With RAID and LVM2, it's not worth that much effort for a home media server.

My wife doesn't know anything about networking. When I tried to tell her about the problem, she asked, "Have you tried calling Al Gore? Since he invented the Internet, he can probably fix it."

I tried to explain the news blurb to my wife, who know nothing about networking. She said, "well, you'd better call Al Gore and tell him you need some more addresses. He invented the internet, surely he can fix it."

Yikes! I have collection of CDs that I bought in the mid to late 80s. Thanks for making me feel old!

That's not a very useful argument. I buy _really_ cheap incandescent bulbs at Wal-Mart, and they last about as long as the package claims. I buy significantly more expensive CFLs from Wal-Mart, and they don't last any longer than the cheap incandescent bulbs, even though the package claims they will last 10 years. Wal-Mart didn't _make_ either of them.

I agree: make sure it has postscript and built-in networking.

I've been completely satisfied with my HP LaserJet 6MP for many years. I'm starting to look for a new printer, now, though, because Apple has finally dropped support for AppleTalk in Snow Leopard! So while the printer still works fine, I can no longer print to it from my main Macs. I have an always-on Linux server, so I used CUPS to set it up as a shared printer, and am able to print through the Linux box, for now. It's not ideal, though, since printing via CUPS gets me an extra page with a postscript error after every print job.

I enjoy watching movies at my "cabin" in the woods, because that's when I have the time to do it. I have a blu-ray player and an hdtv in my cabin BECAUSE I don't have internet access. If I had internet access I'd just download movies. I don't have a phone line and cell phones don't work, which is why I have time to enjoy the movies.