A whitelist approach seems most reasonable to me.

Simple, unobtrusive text ads? Sure.

Huge Flash seizure-inducing videos with sound that play automatically? Go to hell.

Some sites (even slashdot) get so heavy laden with adverts that simply loading any content becomes a headache on high-latency connections like HughesNet. FF + ABP to the rescue.

The OP mentions limited budget and huge volumes of data to back up locally. Working within these constraints, a solution comes into focus:

FreeNAS + rsnapshot. Both are free ($0) and accomplish essentially what Time Machine does for Macs, but to/from almost any hardware. Bear in mind that any solution offering any semblance of security for 8TB of data won't be cheap.

Probably the biggest investment will be the NAS box itself, and of that, the HDDs will most likely cost the most. 8TB of RAIDed storage will easily cost >$500. The other hardware need not be much, it just needs enough SATA ports and power to run the HDDs, plus a GigE NIC.

rsnapshot keeps very intelligent backups, only recording diffs between backups using hardlinks. It's not too difficult to set up, and it's totally automated. The net result is a bunch of, well, snapshots, going back a few hours, days, months, even years if you like (and have storage for).

There's just no way to offer a fireproof solution for this much data without investing serious cash. Definitely store the NAS as physically separate as possible from the original data. The NAS only needs power and a single Cat6 cord, so it's conceivable to place it in a detached building or something. Keep in mind, heat and humidity will become an issue in extremes.

"The human body does not require meat." Yes it does. At most I could accept that due to our technology we can (hardly) substitute meat with something else.

[citation needed]

T. Colin Cambpell, a Ph.D. studied the matter in depth for decades alongside other researchers and revealed, among many other things, that a) our bodies require far less protein than many believe, and b) plants provide an abundance of all required nutrients. Check out the China Study, a spectacular read. Also, a quick look at the vegan wiki entry verifies this ad nauseum. I'm not a hardliner, but there's a *lot* of misinformation floating around this thread, not the least of which revolves around meat being the only viable source of human protein.

Would any of the people commenting on the widespread corruption of the US gov't, and the apparent apathy of the citizenry, care to offer practical advice on how to change things?

Vote? Yeah, that really helps when both candidates are just flipsides of the same messed up coin, products of the same system, never keep campaign promises, and the entire electoral process is either corrupt or obsolete (electoral college)?

Demonstrate? Yeah, that really made a huge difference during OWS. The only difference it made is in the minds of those who demonstrated, who felt like they did something meaningful. No real change.

Strike? That's a leverage tactic for affecting change in the workplace, not so much gov't.

Seriously, I'm not trolling. I really want to know what average US citizen can do to help change things for the better, even in small ways.

• Google has given us helpful search, gold-standard free email and a proliferating mobile platform (amongst other innovations).
• Apple has given us (legal, idiot-proof) music in our pockets, a phone that does "everything" (at least to Joe consumer), and the first consumer-friendly tablet (amongst other innovations).
• Microsoft has given us half-assed clones of all the above, a few failed ventures and yet another attempt to stifle competition, secure boot. (amongst other blunders).

Anyone know of successful at-home internal failure repair, e.g. head crash? I know it's super risky, but tools are available to replace heads, etc.

I once enjoyed the thought of 'liberating' my friends and family from the shackles of Windows in a similar way. I even installed Ubuntu on a client's computer when I worked in a repair shop, when a desperate mother came seeking a way for her daughter to avoid viruses.

After installing Ubuntu, the client responded positively. Shortly after, I got a call asking how to get their printer working, and how to install MSN messenger. I scrambled to find a *nix clone...ah, aMSN, bingo! OK, install from repos, done.

Now, printer. OK, bring it in with the computer so I can install it. It's a Canon, but it's not in the default CUPS package (at the time). Hit up Canon's website. They have a binary, but it doesn't install right. Crap. I don't remember how it worked out, but I think I got it working after several hours of free labor.

Moral of the story is: don't do this unless you're 100% OK with hand-holding each one of these people with every issue that arises, and are willing to take responsibility for failure if you can't fix a problem.

IMO, desktop Linux is currently appropriate for two audiences: tech-savvy, capable adventurers who want to try something new and don't mind finding answers on their own, or the very computer illiterate, who use machines for literally just getting online and checking email. Even then, you run some risks.

Seems Khan Academy poses more a threat to paid tutoring services than formal education. I view Khan as a free, anytime, anywhere tutor rather than a replacement for earning a BS from an accredited institution.

...new network queue management algorithm designed to fight bufferbloat...

Does this feature work transparently and automatically, or does one need to enable it?

Even many in law enforcement--cops, judges, etc--support ending prohibition on drugs: http://leap.cc

Sure, SQL injection shouldn't work, but it wouldn't matter as much if Yahoo hashed passwords in bcrypt or similar. Why the hell do they store cleartext passwords in a database?

BTW, the file is called yahoo-disclosure.txt.

Yawn. Just more extrapolating trends too far. Sure, when iCrap caught on, CD sales took a nose dive, but I still encounter CDs almost every day. They still fill a functional niche, and I suspect we'll still find CD-Rs on sale at Big Box for a long time. They're a cheap, portable way to physically transport a chunk data—especially audio. No, I'm not burning hundreds at a time, but when I need one, it's the best tool for the job. Contrast this to a floppy, which was totally unreliable, low capacity and utterly replaced by flash drives because of their superiority in almost every way. Sure, we're probably headed for a world where a lot fewer people are buying 4GHz desktops with 8gb ram, and, sure, lots of people will herd happily into walled gardens, because they don't care or don't know better. There are people who only ever used their PC for facebook et al., hell, they probably already swapped it for a mobile device. The thing we can't ever lose sight of is that consumer spending drives this industry. As long as people are willing to spend money for something, someone will be there to accept that money. Just ask the millions of PC gamers out there when they will trade their uber PC for a tablet. Just because something becomes less commonplace and more specialized doesn't mean it's just going to disappear. FUD.

The site says I'm a pirate and I've downloaded tons of warez and porn from a Hughes Net satellite connection capped at 500MB per day. I check my modem's quota regularly and we never use more than a few MB. Obviously either a) making stuff up or b) not accounting for dynamic IPs whatsoever.

It's exclusively available from A Book Apart.

Responsive, in this context, doesn't refer to loading time, but rather the adaptability of a website to respond to a UA's canvas at almost any size and orientation while remaining usable.