No, it's not preventative. It does nothing to prevent the problem. It detects the problem earlier (before, say, a business user does). That's monitoring. It's proactive, not reactive - perhaps that's what you mean?

The glossy screen is the perfect Apple screen because I can simultaneously see the two most important things in the world: the blog I'm writing, and myself. Always myself.

There, fixed that for you.

Do you notice how you either can't recall or can't care to recall the father and son's names? That says something about the emotional attachment you didn't develop for the characters.

Ha! You can tell you aren't Canadian because you put the word ice in front of hockey - that's redundant.

I've installed dozens of Linux distributions side-by-side on my various laptops over the years and invariably I would be booting into the Windows OS of the day (XP, skipped Vista, happy with 7). Partly because of need to access some Windows-only software but also a comfort level. Even though 90% of my laptop use is for web/Internet. This coming from someone who spent his PhD doing everything in CDE (and having an Amiga at home).

But then I tried Jolicloud 1.0. It is based on Ubuntu but feels a lot more like the iPhone in presentation. Applications arrayed on a home screen. Application windows maximized with very little OS clutter. Web applications promoted to feel like full apps.

It boots so fast on my SSD Thinkpad X200 Tablet and it feels comfortable. Perhaps this is the Linux Desktop everyone is waiting for?

Of course, I'm waiting for them to rev the Ubuntu base they are working on so the two-point multi-touch and Wacom pen of the X200 Tablet actually work (they work in Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10, if I recall correctly). That and supporting tethering to my iPhone (both of which work in Windows).

Yes, rationality and irrationality clearly don't mix.

A $50 HDD does not store data by itself. How does the data get from the application to the drive? Cases, CPU, RAM. What about fault tolerance (RAID)? What about backup? What about labour? The figures cited include all that. What about speed? 450 GB 15k RPM verses a 1 TB 7200 RPM. What about advanced features (NetApp FlexClone, that allows copies as differentials, or SnapVault and SnapMirror (i.e. remote copy and syncronization)). What about backup (tape library, tape drives, tapes). What about floor space, racking, AC, Power, UPS, PDU?

Do you even realize all the costs that go into a burdened per GB cost? The physical hard drive may be a trivial part of the cost.

Why not generate PDF for printing purposes?

There are Canadian Universities that have .edu domains - the University of Toronto has both utoronto.ca and toronto.edu.

Don't local Chinese companies that compete with Google, such as Baidu, have to comply with the same censorship restrictions? For it to be an unfair trade barrier, don't local companies have to be treated differently?

For example, in Canada food products must be labelled in both English and French. A US company with US-produced food goods must use different packaging that complies with this law to import those goods into Canada, or, as is often the case, slap a sticker that meets the minimum requirements of the law. Since the law treats local and imported goods the same, it is not considered an unfair trade barrier. It doesn't matter that it is inconvenient for a US company to have to modify its manufacturing process to accommodate that law.

Note I'm not making any statement about the censorship laws being fair or moral in and of themselves.

Did you not read the Google S-1 filing? Here: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm Their shareholders don't have much of a leg to stand on if they want to second guess Google management.

If the areal density increases uniformly in both directions, then you can expect that the read/write speed goes up by the square root of the areal density increase. That is, for 43.75 you'd expect a speed increase of at least between 6 and 7 times. Note that sometimes the density increase is achieved in only one direction or the other, depending on what technology was used to achieve it, in which case all or none of the density increase results in speed increase.

You can achieve speed increases by using multiple heads. LTO and the 3590/3592 proprietary tape technology on which it is based use 8 or 16 tracks read/written simultaneously, with tracks interleaved. There might be 256 tracks with tracks 1, 17, 33, ..., 241 being accessed, then 2, 18, ..., 242. etc. Doubling the number of tracks (density increase of 2 widthwise) wouldn't increase read/write speed. Doubling the number of tracks while simultaneously doubling the number of heads would.

Note that with 8 or 16 heads spread across the tape width, error correction is achieved by writing a matrix of bits (across the tape as well as down the length) with ECC bits added.

Did you just tell a story about a person mixing up "rapping" for "raping" and in the process use the word "allowed" instead of "aloud"?

Yes.

Can you imagine when they develop the ability for the computer to read sign language? I bet an adept person can sign faster than most people can type.