Isn't Lossless FLAC redundant? Lossless Free Lossless Audio Codec? Kinda like an ATM Machine or a PIN Number.

I agree that there is some ability to possibly verify the origin. Now would you care to suggest how (short of creating their own court system) they should determine if the company is correct in their allegations?

Designers HAVE been known to work hard to kill off legitimate clearance/firesale and second hand sales. Companies in general have been known to make mistakes.

Actually, you have infinitely more options. Any of them being viable, well, that's another story.

In the article he does mention that this solution is not for everyone and that failover and other features are outside the scope of the article. However, for his particular usage this is a nice solution.

My question is, where does one acquire the case he uses? My company currently stores a lot of video and the 10TB 4U machines I have been building are quickly running out of space. This would be an ideal solution for my needs.

Because in 2050, you version 2.0 will say
"Hey, guys, if we continue at the current rate, sea levels will rise by about 11 centimeters in *2150*. Let's just work on the problem later".

See, the link you posted costs $150 (ebay stores screw you intentionally on shipping, it's just over $50 in this case), AND it's DIY. Since when does the price of a DIY upgrade = the price of purchasing a computer with the upgrade included? Furthermore, the touchscreen is irrelevant. My price quotes are accurate. Yours are still inaccurate because you're making irrelevant comparisons.

It's clever how you compared it to a touchscreen. That alone pops the price up by $400 - $500 bucks. At the retail establishment in which I used to work, we sold a similar touchscreen machine, and it was twice as expensive as a comparable desktop. The sale price of such a comparable desktop could be as low as $600. In a RETAIL establishment, God knows what you can find online. Add $150 for a monitor (yeah, pretend you don't already have three sitting around). A tad over half the price of the Mac.

New totals:

$600 PC + $150 Monitor + $200 Win7 Home Premium + $100 MS Office: $1150.
$1500 Mac including SL: $1500.

Actually, one of the problems is that it's non-trivial for most users to even discover that the security of their system has been compromised, on any operating system, until it's far too late (or has been compromised in so many different ways that the system succumbs and fails to function in the expected manner).

If someone comes along and steals your car, it's not there when you get back. If they steal the car stereo, there's probably glass all over the place and the stereo's gone. Even if the take it for a joy ride and return it there may be clues, like the position of the seat and mirrors, the odometer reading, the amount of gas in the car, or a change in the position in which it is parked.

If your computer becomes part of a botnet, the best thing for the controlling interests to do is make sure that it's very hard to tell that your computer is infected. A virus or worm might sit on the machine for months infecting other systems before finally unleashing a destructive payload, for the simple reason that this makes it more effective. Tracking malware will hide itself in order to have more time on the system to gain more information for the advertisers that bought the information.

So the most effective, and damaging for the overall security of the network, forms of malware are those that are hardest to find. If the system doesn't tell you that there's suspicious behavior going on, and most users don't know how to see what processes are running on their system (and don't know what processes should be running on their system), then all of the security looks like hand waving, because they don't see a difference between the compromised and secure systems.

Half of the functionality in security products is alerting the user to potentially harmful activity taking place on their computer or network. Of course end users hate when these alerts get in their face and require action on their part, so if they're given a chance to disable them, they do so. The trick is alerting the user without annoying the user, and making it easier to disable a security warning when it's being overly paranoid than it is to disable the entire security system.

My simple analogy is not for a car, but rather my house: if I had to use the older style of home alarm system where I keyed in a security code and then attempted to exit the house while it armed itself, or come into the house and key in the code before the alarm went off, I would never use it. I'd rather depend on the keys that are only effective against those that would probably be stopped just as easily by the fact the door is closed. However, since my house's alarm has a keychain remote like most cars do, it's a simple matter of locking up the house and arming or disarming from outside. Additionally, the alarm is obnoxiously obvious when someone opens/breaks a window, trips a motion sensor, or opens a door. There's simply no chance of someone getting into the house without me knowing it unless they find a way to bypass the system.

Bypassing the system may turn out to be fairly easy for someone that knows how to do so, I really don't know. However, the system is there to handle a higher percentage of possible intruders than the simple lock that my wife can bypass in 30 seconds or less.

Make it easier for the user to understand what is really going on behind the scenes on their machines. Let them see the network traffic, where it's going, and what processes are using it. Make it easy for them to figure out what is supposed to be running on their system and what is not.

"Piracy" is copyright infringement only to most people.

I bought a PS2 with the intent of purchasing $20 games. If I can't find them (out of print or not sold here or whatever), I'll just download them. I intend to give them my money, but if they make it impossible to do that I won't do it.

Of course, that probably means I'll stop buying console stuff and move back to computers. I feel better about giving hardware mfrs my money anyway, even though PC gaming is a constant upgrade treadmill.

Ever higher game prices are only shooting yourself in the foot.

>>>possible that the people who instated Israel as a state were influenced by the prophesy of it's existence.

There's not even that prophecy in the bible. They are making-up stuff. Furthermore the Bible claims the sun stopped moving through the sky for 3 whole days. The only way to make that happen is to make the earth stop spinning, and leave the opposite side of the world (California) in the dark. That seems extremely unlikely, which why during the Age of Reason (1600-1700s) it was concluded that the Bible is not a science book, but a religious text.

Sorry, and I know I'll look like an idiot in ten years when it happens, but how could an OS deny access to camera, speakers, and microphone to all applications without a major (noticeable, uproar-inducing) functionality decrease?

Furthermore, I doubt it's stealing audio at the hardware level, it seems talking the audio from Skype as it is sent / received would be a better plan.

PCs to most people are the scary blinky box in the corner. PCs to some are any x86 machine (Macs included). The original acronym means Personal Computers, as you stated. By that definition, my cell phone is a PC. While some may argue the point, it seems most likely that when the average /.er says PC, they mean x86, running Windows.

Where do you live? I want to make sure never to drive there...

Just last week, I followed a kid for about 3 miles of my morning commute. During the entire time, he had a cellphone clutched in one hand, holding it above the steering wheel. Multiple times he crossed the center line. Multiple times he wandered into the bike lane. Twice I had to tap the horn to wake him up at a green light. The highlight came when we reached a point where the road narrowed (the bike lane ended), and he promptly bounced the left-side wheels off the curb. I think that got his attention, because he put the phone down and put on his seat belt.

I understand kids do dumb things. Hopefully he (and you) will live long enough to learn how dumb this truly is, without killing someone else along the way.

But since I've never said it, I don't see your point.

You still seem to think that if you disagree with evil anti-piracy measures, then you support piracy.