All due respect, but my experience is exactly the opposite of yours.

  I've custom built and sold over 800 systems in the last five years, and the AMD based systems, in terms of hardware reliability, are far, far better than the intel based systems - especially in the mini case formats, where heat is a factor, but including the gaming rigs.

  Just looking at my invoices for this year, hardware replacement for the intel systems is over three times as common as it is for the amd based systems - and that includes the work I've done on systems I didn't build.

  I'm not even going to go into mobo driver issues, except to say fuck ATI. Any cognitive diss wrt that you can pipe to devnull.

  I agree with the GP. AMD kicks ass. I have seven custom built systems at home, all AMD/nvidia combos now as of early this year, because Intel's kit has not treated me very well since at least '05. They are rock solid. Downtime? What's that?

  YMMV, Flame on.

  GSVEMR

  Hah! Needs a Not Safe While Drinking Beer mod.

  I like your sig. Reminds me of a t-shirt I have:

"You laugh because I'm different. I laugh because you are all the same."

  GSVEMR

Bake a cantaloupe in the oven at low temp until it's hard enough.

  (Yes, actually know someone who tried that back in the early 80s. Thankfully, it wasn't me who had to deal with the parents coming home to a very evil smelling house. You know who you are, sis.)

  "My grand-dad died peacefully at 102 years of age, unlike the screaming passengers in his car." - ? :-D

  I like that idea - when I was a kid in the 70s I once mounted a battery powered megaphone on my bicycle, just for kicks - but it'd only distract the morons behind the wheel that much more ;-(

Back in the 80s, I had, literally, BOXES full of floppy disks.

  Then I used to have several 250 disk CD holders with backups. Then I used the same ones for DVD backups, but could store a lot more. I still use them, but mostly for video clips/etc that we want to watch on the tv.

  Then hard drives got cheap enough - and reliable enough - to keep a couple of larger standard IDE internals around just to copy things off to, then store away until I did it again. That was a pain, but not as much as losing all my "stuff".

  Then until about a year and a half ago it was two Maxtor OneTouch 300GB usb drives. (Always keep a mirror drive - always)

  Then two 500GB externals.

  Now it's two 2TB WD externals, usb,firewire,eSATA, one drive operates continuously as a network aware backup drive, the other I rsync the first one to once a week or so, and when not in use it is stored in the firesafe. Even with the amount of backup data I have - about a terabyte+/-, dating back to the mid-90s for the most part with some older stuff going back to before Win3.1, I probably won't have to upgrade for at least a couple years.

  I'm waiting for multi-terabyte solid state storage to get cheap enough... which it will, eventually...

  Still, however, I do some really important backups - like my financial stuff, email, pictures, etc - to DVD, and store those in my safety deposit box. Along with a hard drive containing the same data, which I upgrade every year or so (hard drives are CHEAP nowadays, near enough free it makes no difference).

  Paranoid, me? *g* Hell, yes. I've lost entirely too many memories, and important work, over the last 25 or so years because of media failure. I did all the video/picture work for a good friend's funeral in '99, and lost it all, because I didn't back it up soon enough. Never. Frakking. Again.

  The importance of multiple backups cannot ever be stressed enough; even for what seems unimportant at the time, because one never knows what one might want to look at years later.

  The platters are *awesome* for that. Highly reflective, and with a nice hole in the middle for aiming. Plus, they're free...

  To ensure I don't need it as a backup drive, then I wipe it, test it, and sell it on Ebay.

  It's amazing what some older drives will sell for, particularly IDE laptop drives.

I've been physically assaulted for jokes.

  Ditto. Not twice, tho. Not yet. Didn't have to pay their hospital bills, either. I might have to visit that particular bit of karma on a neighbor, soon, however. I'll survive it. He won't.

  Even here, where one would expect a certain level of humor, it often falls flat.

  I agree, but I think if my karma was in trouble I would refrain from cracking wise.

  I will not refrain from being honest, nor cracking jokes; "karma" on slashdot is an artificial thing that has nothing to do with real life.

  I find it pretty sad that anyone really cares about that. Honestly, who cares? It's just a website.

Whatever.

  GSVEMR

      Speaking as somebody who has over a half million miles of professional on the road driving experience and a completely clean driving record during that time, I would expand your criteria to include anyone who cannot demonstrate an ability to pass the same tests that law enforcement officials, truck drivers, and other professionals have to pass.

    You might as well push your logic to the conclusion it demands - get the people without the proper reflexes, the incompetent who just can't learn how to operate a motor vehicle, or learn the rules, and the ones without the proper attitude behind the wheel, off the road. Get the "old" and "young" people off the road. For that matter, get everyone off the damned road, rip up the concrete and put railways there ;-)

  Do that, we might see a real drop in fatalities. The statistics regarding drunk driving have been massively overinflated for decades, often because it's a nice political election football. Incompetent or inattentive drivers still account for the most massive percentage of accidents. Perhaps we should concentrate on the most common causes, rather than on the not so common causes. But that wouldn't satisfy the teetotalers.

  I'd rather be sharing the road with someone who is drunk and weaving, than with someone who just plain doesn't know how to operate their damned vehicle. I have a better chance of predicting what the drunk will do than I have with the other.

  YMMV.

  People with the right connections and good enough lawyers won't even have to worry about paying the fines.

  Indeed. Anyone who thinks that a complete and total police state would eliminate or completely control human "misbehavior" is not only ignorant but fundamentally stupid and certainly should not be holding any position in which they have power over others. I seem to recall that personal freedom is something that is often lauded as what our military vets have died for - here in the US - opposing such thorough and socially devastating state control as that imposed by Stalin, Hitler, etc, in the name of protecting the citizens.

  Good little citizen. Pat, pat, pat. ID, please. Are you a official citizen? Do you have any Sins to declare?

GSVEMR

check out Return of the Ewok

  Oh, thank you, sir, for that. Hadn't seen it. I won't go as far as to say I spewed beer out my nostrils, but it was a close, close thing.

GSVEMR

I didn't get to see it... and as an old Star Wars fan, who first saw it in the Paramount Theater in Mason City, IA, during it's first run, PAID FOR 26 CONSECUTIVE SHOWINGS during it's run there, bought the FIRST VHS tapes out and wore them out, spent thousands of hours building the plastic models you charged so much for, went and saw all of the first trilogy in the theaters many times, vhs, and even, even!!! despite my misgivings, went and paid to see the "prequels" at least twice each in the theater just so nobody could say I didn't know what was going on.... etc, etc, after this and the last article here about Lucas, all I have to say is

  FUCK YOU AND YOUR GREEDY BULLSHIT, GEORGE. OH, AND FUCK YOU FOR YOUR "SPECIAL EDITION" TOO. Han shoots first, because he's HAN SOLO, the smuggler, all around scoundrel, and independent human being. I LIKED HIM THE WAY HE WAS. TAKE YOUR POLITICALLY CORRECT BANTHA POODOO AND YOURSELF AND CRUSH THEM IN A WASTE DISPOSAL UNIT ALONG WITH YOUR SITH LAWYERS THEN FEED THE RESULTING GOO TO THE SARLACC.

  I think we can certainly dispel any doubts about whether or not Lucas's Sith Army of lawyers monitors the web.

  It's kind of funny, you know - Star Wars was all about fighting oppression in the form of an evil empire. Then Lucas joins one.... or creates one, that line is pretty blurry...

  Also - and this is rather ironic, really - Google stands up to China's EvIL EmPiRE (TM), but can't stand up to the Lucas/Hollywood Empire.

  In any case, it doesn't matter. It was up long enough that many people would have ripped the video from Youtube, converted it, and it'll be all over the web in many forms in hours, if it isn't already (haven't checked yet, had to comment on it first *g*)

  Let's see Lucas's Empire put a C&D on THAT.

  The more web servers you attempt to influence, Lucas, the more copies will slip thru your fingers...

    Long live the Rebellion!

  GSVEMR