Thank you. Now I just need to learn checking my spelling better, sorry for all the typos (e.g. mdam instead of mdadm).

I have a four tier strategy, based on the fact that discs are cheap. I call it 6666 as in 6 inches, 6 feet, 6 miles and 6 thousand miles. I developed it based on a need to backup several hundred GB to few TB of data with respect to the privacy but still allowing sharing with my family.

Tier 1: 6 inches
RAID 1 in my desktop All important files that cannot be duplicated are stored on RAID 1 disk array. If a disk fail I have a local copy immediately available for restore

Tier 2: 6 feet
Local online backup. Each important file is duplicated between my desktop and my file server. On file server the files are stored on a RAID 1 array. If my local desktop break completely (e.g. motherboard burns out and takes the disk controller and disks with it) I have the file server immediately available for restore. The replication is done on a scheduled and manual basis.

Tier 3: 6 miles
All important files are from time to time copied to a portable hard disk that is stored in a safety deposit box. This disk is updated every few weeks/months. If my house burns down I have majority of my data locally available for immediate restore. The data which are not present are restored from the remote backup in tier 4.

Tier 4: 6000 miles
All important files are remotely copied to a file server at my parents house on a different continent. It servers, two purposes. If for some reason my immediate locality is affected by natural disaster (fire, flood, tornado), my files are safe. Also if my parents wants to see my HD videos of my kids, they have them locally available and I don't have to share it with them. The replication is done on manual basis.

I have experimented with many different technologies how to implement this strategy (CrashPlan, HW RAID, SW RAID, rsync, etc.) and this is what I have settled on since it is foolproof, non proprietary and can be implemented (in case of remote backup) by non techie.

Tier 1: SW RAID using mdam on Ubuntu 64b Desktop encrypted using LUKS
Tier 2: SW RAID using mdam on CentOS 64b Server encrypted using LUKS. Populated manually using rsync every time I upload new pictures and videos to server. Home directories and documents are rsynced automatically every few hours.(Before I used CrashPlan)
Tier 3: Truecrypt on portable HDD populated using rsync manually to review changes.
Tier 4: PogoPlug modded using http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=pogoplug+arm+linux&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 to provide remote ssh server and local Samba server. Data are copied manually using rsync every time I update tier 2. The local Samba is used for local sharing of the multimedia (pictures, videos) at the destination. The beauty of this solution is that is is completely plug and play and my parents don't have to know anything about technology. I gave them 2 pieces of hardware (pogoplug and hdd), they plugged in 4 cords at their location (1 network, 1 usb, two power) and I configured their router.

Cost
Tier 1: 1 extra internal HDD (assuming desktop computer is already present)
Tier 2: 1 extra internal HDD (assuming you are already running filer server for your household)
Tier 3: 1 portable HDD
Tier 4: 1 Pogoplug ($30 on sale) + 1 portable HDD

If you start with 3 TB disks in each computer. This solution required 4 extra 3 TB disks + 1 pogoplug and little bit of manual effort.

I quite don't understand people bad mouthing PSP. It is not about size, hardware, performance, but about having fun playing game on the go. I used to be a PC game player. Never had a console. I bought PSP last christmas, just because they are now quite cheap (new ~130, used ~80) and have large selection of good games (for adults), can be used as media player on trip and also go online if needed. Now months later I played it almost every week, multiple days at a time, had tons of fun, own more games than I am able to regularly play and not having need to try different console or put it down any time soon. Whats more, I just bought another one for the family to share for watching movies on trips. From my standpoint PSP is really really good. Very nice hardware, very nice price, very nice games, who cares what other people are saying and doing.

What I want to know is, what open source code was worth such risk of being accused of inappropriate behavior.

Pretty good article? Hmmm "The new Palm Pre, another exclusive deal, this time by Verizon Wireless, tricked iTunes into thinking it was an iPod." I am sure people at Sprint are wondering what did they paid all the money to Palm for :-).

They never sold SapDB to MySQL, they just had marketing and distribution agreement.

Native Java on i386 and soon on amd64 http://www.netbsd.org/~ad/50/img8.html Anybody knows more about this?

Nothing comes many times from IBM period. Read on the web about how many Texas government offices lost months of data and documents because IBM failed to backup servers that they were given to manage under outsourcing contract.

Skype on Linux does video just fine. Not all webcams though work on Linux. Ubuntu has a nice wiki page which webcam works with Skype and which doesn't.

Hotmail was migrated from FreeBSD to IIS few years ago. It originally run on FreeBSD when Microsoft purchased it.