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Comment Re:$10,000 CHALLENGE to Alexander Peter Kowalski (Score 1) 523

Yeah, that's pretty much it. The poll is polluted by non-traveling mouth-breathers.

Consider that only 1/3 of Americans hold valid passports. I'd guess that the percentage that flies more at least once a year is around the same, perhaps less.

Which means that the non-travelers are just fine with whatever tactics that the TSA uses.

Comment Re:I design the best reading the light for the Kin (Score 1) 132

Why was it the best?

It was cheaper. It used less electricity, about 1/3 as much. Despite the video, it threw more diffuse and even light than the Amazon cover. The LED used was "warmer". It was provided a kickstand feature, and worked great as an ergo-grip. The light could be adjusted optimally for many different reading angles and positions, while the Amazon light worked just for one (it's not good for reading in bed, for example).

And for some folks, the Amazon light offends their vegan sensibilities, and mine doesn't.

Things like close-up lighting are really hard to get right on video, FYI.

Comment Re:Crashplan (Score 1) 304

Another vote for Crashplan. I have the family plan. It's Linux friendly. There are no data limits. It's fairly cheap for what it is (I think that I can backup all of the computers in my "family" for $200 for two years).

But it isn't enough.

My semi-paranoid backup plan (and yes, I know that RAID is not backup):

  • Windows machines boot from soft-mirrored drives
  • They also back up to a Linux server w/ RAID 5 via Macrium Reflect
  • Most files are stored on a another Linux server, RAID 5
  • The main server rsyncs its contents to a "hidden" RAID 5 once a night. Gives a 24 hour window to retrieve accidentally deleted files locally
  • All Windows and Linux boxes constantly backup to the cloud via Crashplan (but not the Macrium backup files - too large).

Sadly, Crashplan's worst problem is that it can't keep up with my FIOS speeds. It tops out at about 1-2MB/s, while FIOS allows up to 5MB/s up speeds. If it could, I'd even backup the Macrium image files.

I had a bad Windows disaster and lost a bunch of data two years ago. It was a BIOS bug, I think - Windows 7 suddenly thought I had a new drive geometry, and it blue-screened and started to automatically try to "fix" things upon reboot. I'm surprised that no one has shit all over them for this "user-friendly" design decision.

And it turns out that the precautions I had in place at the time ALL FAILED. The mirror (Intel fakeraid) had silently failed a while before (probably because of the crap BIOS) - not that it would have probably made a difference. The previous backup software had silently failed a while before. I wasn't using cloud backup. And the drives in my file server started to fail one after another at the same time.

It took two sleepless weeks to get most (but not all) of my data back.

Lesson: have several layers of backup and redundancy. And CHECK that everything is working as intended periodically, or you'll find that all of your condoms have broken.

Comment Well, actually... (Score 1) 154

I was once out to dinner with Tim (and some others). It was at a Benihana's in Napiersville, IL. It was for a W3C thing.

After several sake-bombs, he wistfully expressed regret that he hadn't gotten a patent on the URL. He his idea was that he would have freed the patent, except for anyone putting a URL in print for purposes of advertising. Those folks would have had to pay him a fraction of a cent per impression.

I'm not so sure how serious he was, be he really looked pretty sad.

Java

Apache Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee 136

iammichael writes "The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee due to a long dispute over the licensing restrictions placed on the TCK (test kit validating third-party Java implementations are compatible with the specification)."

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