Nobody is going to feel sorry for you because you choose to live in a STUPID location and then complain that the location is excessively prone to trapping/concentrating pollution.

Yeah, plenty can see better than 20/20, but a whole lot can't even see 20/20 with correction. I would guess maybe 1/3 the population is significantly below 20/20.

Ban the fucking voice vote, goddammit. It's only a rule of the Senate that allows it. The term does not occur in the Constitution.

Slam dunk.

It's an interesting fantasy, and it would make a superb story. But note that the Chief Executive controls the FBI and the prisons.

OTOH, while a President who is a participant in an evil government gone rogue, as all for at least the last 100 years have been, makes a fearsome tyrant, at the same time a truly patriotic and true President who has a powerful enough strength of character and persuasive/organizational powers to keep just 1/3 of the Senate from impeaching him, could be the only credible source of salvation.

The Declaration of Independence is an apologia in the true and noble sense of the word, but it does not convey any legal framework. The Constitution does that. So yes, the people are the source of power and the recourse when the government has gone rogue, but note well that they then act extra-Constitutionally and absent any legal foundation - just as the agents of the Revolution did. And they are subject to perfectly legal prosecution for treason - just as the agents of the Revolution were. It takes a hell of a lot of guts and determination.

But he controls NSA. He tells them what to do and what not to do. Hell, a President (Truman) created NSA without any say-so from Congress. That's why they call him the Chief Executive. Congress could arguably ban the NSA completely, but in the absence of something it will never do, its participation in setting up the NSA was never required, and its participation in the NSA's continuing existence is not required now.

As for the Supreme Court, how many legions of law enforcement and, in the ultimate rubber-meets-the-road, military do they control? I'll tell you. Zero. The Executive Branch holds that control. The difference between the Republic set up by the Constitution and a totalitarian state is not that great. All the Constitution did to mitigate the President's absolute power is to set up the toy rattle of impeachment, knowing goddam well nobody would ever have the guts to use it.

So he can just tell the NSA they SHALL NOT invade privacy without warrants and they have to comply. But we all know none of the puppets of at least the last hundred years would have ever done that, and most goddam certainly not Bush or Obama or whoever the successor puppet is chosen to be by our masters.

And before I get lectured, yes, I realize full well nobody in Washington DC has the real power. They are all just puppets. And the public is a bunch of brainwashed zombies. I have merely described the formal legalities.

Not by vocation, but it was pretty easy to learn enough to get by just fine. As it happens I did "get something usable" running in not much time at all.

Where do you even find a CPU that old? Get a real CPU. Not like the cost has to be anything more than trivial.

A serious question: why use FreeNAS, a repackaged FreeBSD, when you can just use the way more up to date real thing - FreeBSD 10.1 itself?

16GB ECC only costs a little over $100. You can way, way beat that price if you build your own.

I built a 4U rack with 12 hot swap bays, a quad core Haswell, 32 GB of ECC RAM for about that price, all up less drives. That includes an 8 SATA3 PCIe x8 card as well as 10 SATA3 built in to the motherboard.

I run FreeBSD 10 on it with ZFS. Why settle for a repackaged FreeBSD, way out of date, when you can use the real thing? They are both free.

Spain and certain other countries are wallowing relics of another age, unable to adapt to the new reality. The loss is theirs. How do they expect to keep their populations from discovering the power of VPNs, Tor, and the other facilities which can effortlessly sidestep their moronic restrictions?

But I feel like Pi still has that prototyping advantage.

All right, since the C1 has exactly the same GPIO pinout and functionality except for 3 pins used by the ADC which the Pi doesn't have, why do you believe that the Pi has the prototyping advantage?

The Arduino Pro Mini blows away both the normal size Arduino and the Raspberry Pi in terms of power drain and size, since you mention those attributes specifically. As well as cost. Heck, even the Teensy 3.x blows them away. And with either the Pro Mini or the Teensy 3.x you don't have to resort to addon crap for PWM.

Do you have any skills at all comparing specs?

The Banana Pi and Odroid-C1 are in quite separate domains. The Banana Pi has SATA, which sets it apart from just about ALL the others. The Odroid-C1 has FOUR USB, which completely set it apart from the Banana Pi. For example, connect a keyboard and mouse to the Pi and you're all done. You've got no USB left. With the C1, you've still got 2 USB left. There's also a significant price difference. The Pi is at least 2/3 more expensive. And half the core count.

Both of them do blow away the weak, ancient, proprietary shit CPU on the Raspberry Pi.