Gee.. I wonder if the (R)'s don't have a hard-on to bring on the police-state as much as the democrats? I *used* to be a Republican, after about 1/2 way thru BushJr's second term, I got fed up with the shitting that BOTH parties are doing on the Constitution and dumped the R's.. I held my nose in 2008 and voted for McCain and gleefully voted for Romney in 2012... BUT the vast majority of Republicans nowadays are simply "Democrat-Lite".. They want to shit on the Constitution as much as the D's do... I'm beginning to wonder even about the new R's that came in back in the landslide of 2010, some of them seem to be eying the Constitution as toilet paper also.... Woe unto us...

I believe you're talking about Mars-One (http://www.mars-one.com/mission/roadmap) . They have begun taking applications for colonists to go to Mars. They had over 200,000 applications for becoming one of these colonists. The plan is, starting in 2018, sending supply missions to Mars and a rover, and then in 2024, sending 3 colonists every 2 years.. Its ambitious, but if we wait for governments to do this, we'll be waiting a VERY VERY long time....

Excellent idea! I have a Dell Precision laptop, pulled out the DVD drive, bought one of the "2nd drive replacement sleds" for like $10, and now I have two drives in the system.. Just saving up my sheckles to be able to buy a 256GB SSD... Money is tight right now...

Yup... That bit me recently.. Wanted a Dell Precision laptop, new was WAAAY out of my price range, so I found a nice M4400 on the Dell Offlease website for $200, it came with 2GB of DDR2 ram, but supported up to 8GB. Forgot about the DDR2 price gotcha.. Had to pay over $100 for 2 4GB DDR2 sticks.. Then about a month after buying the M4400, I spot an M4500 on the website, for $225.. I wanted to cry.. The M4500 supports up to 16GB and uses DDR3 ram, which a bit of Googling told me I could buy 16GB of DDR3 for about what I paid for the 8GB DDR2.... Oh well... Live and learn...

Why bother? Debian itself or the Mint-Debian edition will work just as well, withOUT the moronic Canonical touch that Ubuntu seems to have... I used to tout Ubuntu to all my friends, many of whom were on Windows.. Since Canonical/Ubuntu has started this slide to insanity, I've switched my allegiance over to Debian, for those who are fairly Linux-knowledgable, and Mint-Debian Edition, for Linux noobs..

I rent several 512MB Xen-based Linux virtual servers that I pay $28.50/semi-annually for. On month-to-month, they're $5/mo.. They come with 512mb of ram, 1GB of swap, 30GB of diskspace, and 1TB of transfer/month.. I've only had one minor issue with them, where somehow, the vps allocated_ram configuration on one of my slices got set to 128mb vs 512mb.. A quick support ticket to them got the problem fixed. I'd say that was quite a bit cheaper than AWS.. I don't have any ties with the company, just a happy customer.. Google "Virpus networks"...

America's been the brunt of an epic April Fools prank for the last 15 years or so.. A prank that is not the least bit funny..And its gotten a LOT worse in the last five years.. I, for one, am NOT laughing nor pleased....

Kinda sounds like one *I* would play in....

You think Debian, circa 2002-2003 was bad? you shoulda tried Slackware back around 1995 or so.. Umptysquat floppy disks, handediting ALL the config files for EVERYTHING.. Since most of the time I was building a server to run ftpd or httpd, I didn't bother messing with XFree86 and its mindnumbing configuration... Today's Linux is da BOMB!!

Instead, we have what has now become the defacto US Department of Propaganda.. Herman Goebbles, Hitler's propaganda minister, would have had an orgasm over the kind of power today's propaganda apparatus has...

Geez.. I wish I hadn't already posted.. I'd mod you UP UP UP.. I STRONGLY agree with your eloquent statement on "consequences"... Snowden has sacrificed his normal life, where he will likely be permanently exiled to whatEVER country feels the cojones to stand up to what has become the American war-machine... hint: VERY few countries have these cojones... Russia being one of the very few.. If he'd stayed in the US, he'd more than likely be dead now... As much as I love America, having served in the Army in the 70s, I'm terrified of its government, which has become totally evil in the last 20 years or so..

Yes, Snowden broke the "law", a "law" that ANYone with half a brain could see violated the Constitution, DESPITE what the paid-off Congress and Judiciary say.. He stood up for the Constitution, and is a hero in my book, like many of the heroes from the first American Revolution.. I say "first revolution" because I'm damn sure we're well into the 2nd Revolution... I fear this one is gonna be MUCH bloodier than the first...

Always knew there was something about the Woz I really admired...

I do a multi-level backup.. I have about 110GB of stuff thats nice to have, but if the house burned down and took the machine the data was on, the house server, AND the USB NAS drive that 110GB is backed up on, I'd not lose too much sleep, THEN I have a smaller subset of data, about 10GB that I would cry my eyes out if it were lost. You can imagine the data is.. Tax returns, pictures, scanned documents, etc.. That subset is backed up to the NAS and house server along with the 110GB of stuff, PLUS its backed up to AWS S3. I really couldn't see wasting $$ to backup the whole 120GB...

Judging from the increasing number of brain-dead liberals infesting America, I think you're gonna be waiting a LONG LONG time......