IMHO they should be able to create a computer that pretends to be a real mac.

The part that concerns me is "Circumventing any technological measure that effectively controls access Mac OS X, including, but not limited to, the technological measure used by Apple to prevent unauthorized copying of Mac OS X on non-Apple computers."

Why shouldn't they be able to make an OS X compatible machine? I agree they shouldn't be able to modify AND redistribute OS X. But shipping a machine that allows OS X to be installed seems perfectly reasonable. Activision went through this with Atari early on, making 'compatible software' and later on there are many cases of 'compatible hardware' that have been allowed. But these days the DMCA prevents this sort of thing,

"(a) Violations Regarding Circumvention of Technological Measures.—
(1)
(A) No person shall circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title."

To me that is just unreasonable. As long as it is not a copyright violation, there shouldn't be any rules restricting your rights build your own device/software to interact with any other device/software if it does not cause any harm to 3rd party system. Although, I'm sure this gets sticky when writing an alternative WoW client or some such that 'cheats' or causes some other form of mahem, currently the line is drawn too far in favor of protection over liberty.

If they were giving out extra free days last year Armadillo probably would have got 100% of the money a year ago! The judges should have taken this in to account, bonus points for accuracy? Sure, but they should lose a place just for having to try a 4th time. Fair would be armadillo gets $1.5m, being 'nice' would be $1m to armadillo and .5 to Masten. But the other way around is just totally bogus.

Armadillo definitely deserved the full million. IMHO...

So this really only effects devices that already don't have external antennas e.g. cell phones, aftermarket GPS devices and Radar Detectors. As soon as an automaker is required to include this, they'll also need to include a repeater for cellphones. Most cars will probably have built in GPS by the time this goes through, so that just leaves radar detectors, which will need external pickups.

For some reason I'm picturing cars with 3-4 different antenna nubs sticking out for cell, gps, fm, am, radar, satellite radio, etc... canceling out any real benefits.

Or alternatively, cheap fractal antennas with passive or active repeaters (although I would imagine active would ruin GPS timing).

RAID6 is pretty obvious, as drive sizes have increased and rebuild times increase the likelihood of a double failure also increases. It also gives you some security if you replace the wrong drive or some other mishap. I would love nothing more than to be able to fully back up my data, but, it's simple I'd rather have more storage than a fullback...NoBackupRAID5RAID6RealBackup

Critical data, I backup, but bulk media storage is just that, bulk media... while it would be very sad to lose it all I just can't justify the cost of backing up 5TB of storage for persona use. I suppose that's what the original DVD/CD/BD media is for anyway.

For now I will just keep on using the strategy of upgrading before my storage systems get unreliable.

I've done this every 2-3 years three times now for personal use and a couple times for work. My first was 7x120 and used 2 4 port ATA controllers and software RAID5. My second was 7x400 and used a Highpoint rocket RAID card. My third one is 8x750gb and also uses a Highpoint card.

Lessons learned:
1. Non RAID type drives cause unpredictable and annoying performance issues as the RAID ages and fills with data.
  1a. The drives can potentially drop out of the raid group (necessitating an automated rebuild) if they don't respond for too long.
  1b. A single drive with some bad sectors can drag down performance to a crawl.
2. Software RAID is probably faster than hardware RAID for the money. A fast CPU is much cheaper than a very high performance RAID card low end cards like the Highpoint are likely slower for the money.
3. Software RAID setup is usually more complicated.
4. Compatibility issues with Highpoint cards and motherboards are no fun
5. For work purposes use RAID approved drives and 3Ware cards or software.
6. Old PCI will max out your performance. 33Mhz * 32bit = 132MB/sec minus over head, minus passing through it a couple times == 30MB/sec performance
7. If you go with software RAID you'll need a fat power supply, if you choose a raid card most of them support staggered start up and you won't really need much. Spin up power is 1-2amps typically but once they're running they don't take a lot of power.
8. Really cheap cases that hold 8 drives are hard to find. Careful to get enough mounting brackets, fans, power Y-adapters online so you don't spend too much on them at your local Fry's.

For my 4th personal RAID I will probably choose RAID6 and go back to software RAID. Likely at least 9x1.5TB if I were to do it today. 1.5TB drives can be had for $100 on discount. So RAID5 $800 for ~10TB formatted or $900 for RAID6. +case/cpu/etc...

I'd love to hear others feedback on similar personal use ULTRA CHEAP RAID setups.

Is it me or is Real ID like DRM? For anyone who really wants to circumvent the system, it's not very difficult for a determined individual to do so. But, it's a serious pain the a$$ for a certain percentage of the law abiding citizens to deal with it.

I don't see any benefits and I see privacy, cost and bureaucracy negatives.

Maybe they will actually innovate and create something new. Personally I would love to see them go down a new path with consumers in mind. I would like to see something like what Drobo does for storage (at least in theory) make RAID seamless to end users. Have options like "Optimize this system for video production - less reliable data", "Optimize this system for general use", "Optimize this system for maximum space" those sorts of things. Then the system would automatically add volumes to the storage pool or allow them to be removed (if possible) in the most optimized fashion (striping, mirroring, etc...).

Obviously, do basic cleanup while they are in there (performance optimization, larger general limits, etc...).

Personally, if they dropped ZFS to do this I would be happy and say it was a good call.

I just opened a spool of CD-R's, DVD-Rs, and compared them to Pressed DVD/CD's. The burned disks are QUITE STRONG in oder and its EASY to tell the difference even between CD-R and DVD-R at least with the disks I'm smelling. While they may have trained the dogs to smell for all of it, the dogs nose is WAY more sensitive than mine and I can easily distinguish after smelling a few.

Dogs would have ZERO problem telling them apart. It should be fairly trivial to give dogs a sampling of various burned media and then have them sniff them out.

I'm surprised people even think this is even far fetched. Sound pretty straight forward to me. But, then again i'm practical and the first thing I tried was smelling a bunch of media...

Personally I appreciate anything that recovers vertical space. We live in a world of vertical webpages on widescreen monitors...so lame...

Best comparison I came up with was the Mediterranean which is a bit bigger, but not much.

This is a case of FALSE NEWS...it was a SINGLE distributor who stopped selling VHS. There are PLENTY of other companies still manufacturing, selling and distributing VHS tapes.

I have no love for the format, but this is a total FAKE STORY...It's based on a SINGLE distributor in Burbank, CA, who some LA Times reporter interviewed...

I mean my phone lasts for days if i don't use it and many hours if i'm just talking. The vast majority of power seems to be used when I'm watching video, playing games, or browsing the web. My guess would be this is more CPU related.

So even if it saves 10x in the transmit/receive it still might only be a 2x overall savings or less. I suppose it depends on usage patterns.