This happened to me once. At first I thought it was a hard drive problem, it took me a while to figure it out. I lost many pictures in the process, and had rsync'd corrupted files over my backup. To me the problem now is: how to make sure what I'm backing up is not corrupted and that my previous backup, about to be overwritten, is not cleaner than my source?

The quote in the summary is funny. Nietzsche wrote something much more interesting and thorough about cause and effect and what it means for science in 1882. That's right, Wired's newfound worry about science today has already been dealt with 130 YEARS AGO.
http://books.google.fr/books?id=Vf8KETLiKXMC&pg=PA113&lpg=PA113&dq=nietzsche+gay+science+cause+effect&source=bl&ots=7pQG91yPvP&sig=JFwAumRAPzIqqwwMDk2XPbpqqIE&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=X0spT-fROYje8QODzZ2kAw&ved=0CFoQ6AEwAw

so you don't have the knowledge to appreciate a dslr, yet you're willing to buy a similarly expensive mirrorless camera with multiple lenses?

If you buy a cheap 50mm for your camera, it'll work from entry level to pro body. I only use Canon since I got the 350d, but since then I steadily upgraded my gear, lenses and bodies. I never was at a point where a lens was not compatible with my camera. At one point of course you can choose to sell a lens to get a better one, but that doesn't mean all of your gear has become useless. So I don't get where you think this is a fallacy -- it actually is one of the strongest selling points for DSLRs, image quality aside.

Smugmug, and also a spare external hard drive for monthly backups. That should be enough.

This is the doing of Christian Estrosi, mayor of Nice and minister of Industry, whose education consisted in winning motorcycle races. He's at the forefront of applying repression at the city level, and actually wanted to fine mayors of other cities where crime is not sufficiantly fought in his eyes. Funny coming from the guy in charge of the city where the Russian Mafia is rampant... anyway the summary has is wrong, in terms of politically correct French. The French government wants everyone to stop using the ugly word 'videosurveillance' and instead opt for the friendly, wonderfully orwellian 'videoprotection'.

The conseil constitutionnel is not a joke compared to the US Supreme Court, it's just something completely different. It validates or invalidates laws passed by parliement, when the supreme court is a judicial body, ruling over a court case.

i actually retrieved my great-grand-father's work hammer (he was a smith). 1876 sounds about right for it.

apparently it worked in australia, or new-zeland, i don't remember.

Also, for information, the 3-strikes law will be discussed next week, and implies juicy stuff like "guilty until proven innocent" and "you can only prove innocent if you have installed official government trojan horses on your computer" and "these malware have no requirement of interoperability, which hurts the choice of costumers (!)". Citizens and bloggers (such as myself) following the Quadrature du Net association are calling for a "blackout" (link in French, sorry) of the French side of the internet in protest.

is MGMT, for what it's worth. When the band decided to sue, Sarkozy's party offered a "symbolic euro" for compensation.

latex + aspell maybe?

i bought an asus xonar because my onboard chip had too much static, which made listening to music on headphones a nightmare. ie, moving the mouse increased the static. now with my sennheiser headphones, listening to my numerous flacs is a blast. my computer is my only source of music, and a dedicated sound card really made a huge difference, both in quality, depth, and non-staticness.