btrfs is simply not there, yet.

My off-site git-annex machine uses zfs-fuse with RAIDZ2 and copies=2.

Just because I can reasonably assume that one location is safe does not mean that I can't use a tool to manage and verify all copies automagically ;)
Especially since my laptop does not have any checksumming FS but I still need to use it to make copies while on the road.

I am going to be boring and tell you what I learned from the founder of a data recovery company.

1) One single pass of zeros is enough. urandom if you want to be paranoid.
2) If you want, or need (auditing, etc), to physically destroy the drives: Bend the platters. As soon as the platters are bent, you can not spin them for data extraction, any more. Keeping in mind the distance between head and platters, even the slightest bend becomes irreparable. And as soon as you can't spin them, you are looking at scanning the whole platter without any fancy off-the-shelf controller logic.

According to him, those are the only two cases when they tell the customer over the phone that they don't even have to bother sending the disks in.

The point is that the platters get bent.

> Every 3 months

Aye.

> , never ceases to amaze me.

Not me. I care deeply about this topic and all the common answers/options are shit.

I knew people in the US paid for receiving SMS, but you pay for receiving calls, as well?

1) Never use DVDs. Ever. They eat data like no tomorrow.
2) Guard against bit rot. Make sure you have checksums of all files so you know when your media degrades.
3) Maintain at least three separate copies in at least two different locations.
4) Ideally, have offline storage, as well. Check on it twice a year, but else: do not touch!
5) As of today, git-annex is your best bet to automate all of the above. Make sure you use the most current version and prepare for a somewhat bumpy road if you don't know git, yet.

I am sure there is some way to deal with tectonic movement over the long term and I would love to hear about it.

is that it exists and you are not spanked to death with a paddle for it.

This is brought to you by "fuck you, I already paid for watching that flick with money and/or by watching the clearly marked and separate advertising."

Also, it does not matter if they hold up soap and grin, all people use Dell/Apple/Nokia/younameit, everyone one two and a half men drinks Radeberger or if companies in Transformers only accept one kind of CC. I like to think I notice that crap and hope others do, as well.
If anything, it leaves a negative image of the company, for me.

> 2) Your brain actually works harder in the weird situation where it's got to talk to someone who's not there â" humans haven't really evolved to do it well.

Does not really make sense, does it? I don't look at passengers while talking to them so they are not "there", either. Same for people in the back seat unless I see them in the rear view mirror.

Unless the concept of cell phones is still new and exciting, I don't believe it's inherently weird due to our path of evolution. If anything, we should all be stunned into silence every time we switch on the light.. And we are pretty used to artificial lighting, by now.

...all of you are more or less pretending that this is a blatant rip-off from day one or Intel giving the consumer more options.

What no one seems to anticipate is how this will change the market.

Is this a move that will give the customer more options at the same initial price? Yes.

But history has shown time and time again that once a company has the ability to press more money out of a customer, they will.
Be it the scumbag OEM who can now claim speeds of "up to* 3 GHz" or similar, be it Intel who may very well run scary-ish ads and campaigns that urge you upgrade or simply "options" which are really mandatory but the average Joe does not find out until way too late.

This is not about replacing the artificial crippling of CPUs with upgrade options. This is about creating an infrastructure to get more money out of the end customer.

And yes, if you are reading this, chances are you will not fall for it even though it annoy you. Consider yourself lucky. Your parents, friends, etc? Not so much.

I always disliked Dark Matter as too magic and Dark Energy even more so.

While I have no problem acknowledging that there won't be any definite answers for quite some time, a basic principle we simply didn't find yet seems more pleasing than matter we can't find.

Either way, interesting times, etc :)

...as a general rule would be awesome. Not only for games but for everything. Artwork etc would still be an issue, but at least the code could be used/updated/improved...

I would love to have Master of Orion _1_ released. TCP/IP and larger integers for the global account. Larger universes, more tech levels to get to, maybe moving stars, improved mass updates to resource management....

I would _pay_ for that.

(MoO2 & 3 can die in a fire)

Either this works for high-level stuff only or there is a _lot_ of magic added for the benefit of shoddy programmers getting away scot-free.

> Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie

Nooooooooo!

That guy makes good movies and while I don't care much for superheroes, his interpretation of Batman is simply a damn good story.

> my biggest complaint is that they took away the desktop icons.

Which is why you can switch to folder view.

> it's graphics accelerated but not snappy.

It's vector graphics. Until you have built a cache of the sizes custom-rendered for your system, it takes a bit. For how long did you try KDE?

> it's really annoying to have to open eight different configuration windows

Specific examples?

I have my own problems with KDE and I am definitely not one who migrated to 4.x lightly, but your issues seem to stem from being used to Gnome and simply accepting that you can't change any settings, anyway (no, their "registry" abomination does not count).