In a room of about 20 people you have a 50/50 chance of having the same birthday as someone else in the room.

No, no, no, no, no! In a room of about 20 people there is a 50/50 chance of having two people with the same birthday. This is absolutely different of you having the same birthday as someone else, which is about 5.5% chance.

-- Pete.

Ahh, I remember Sabena, I flew with them on fairly frequent flights from Brussels to UK in 2001, tickets were cheap as dirt, and the plane was almost empty as no-one trusted that the airline would still be in business the next week. I didn't mind one bit (I saved more than enough on my flights, and paid via credit card in case they went bust - if I lost a flight it wouldn't be the end of the world) - on a couple of flights the flight attendants outnumbered the passengers, so there was excellent service.

Of course they did eventually go bust in November 2001, and SN Brussels Airlines rose from the ashes, later becoming Brussels Airlines.

-- Pete.

Hence the other part of my comment which you didn't quote: "and if I was running in an enterprise with a DS1512+ then I would certainly consider running in RAID6" (although at the time of writing I was actually thinking of the DS1812+ which is more suited to RAID6 as it holds more disks)

I have seen a RAID5 fail whilst waiting for a vendor to replace a disk in a corporate environment - let's just say the vendor had some explaining to do...

-- Pete.

If performance is paramount, use SSD disks, and still use RAID5 or RAID6. The performance gains of RAID0 are absolutely not worth the risks in an enterprise environment.

Also if you're looking for ultimate performance, then you'll connect to the NAS via eSATA and not on the network (the Synology NAS in question has 2xeSATA ports).

I don't think a law firm is going to need such screaming fast disk access anyway.

-- Pete.

Oh, and much as I hate replying to myself, I just remembered another very handy nice feature of Synology NAS boxes, they have a nice easy-to-use mechanism to backup the contents to another Synology box over the network. This is handy in upgrading, and in an enterprise environment it's a nice way to have an up-to-date redundant solution in case the worst happens. So if you have the budget and you want to have belt-and-braces (and in a law firm I hope both of these are the case) then I'd probably recommend getting 2 boxes, and back one up to the other.

-- Pete.

I also definitely recommend Synology NAS solutions - very capable machines and the company is committed to follow-up with their software updates. You buy the NAS now, and as they release continual updates to their firmware, it just gets better and better "for free".

On the other hand, I would never recommend running a NAS with disks in RAID0 - you run a NAS to store your data and to be completely reliable, I configure my DS508 in RAID5, and if I was running in an enterprise with a DS1512+ then I would certainly consider running in RAID6. I have "lost" a disk in my RAID5, and the NAS rebuilt easily once I replaced it - but if you lose a disk in RAID0, then wave goodbye to your data. Unfortunately disks are not 100% reliable, and the speed increase means nothing as soon as you start accessing the NAS over a network.

-- Pete.

TomTom bought TeleAtlas in 2008...

-- Pete.

My flight was via Frankfurt I think - I was flying via a connecting flight, and although I'm from the UK, I didn't live there then (or now!).

-- Pete.

These structures absolutely exist...

Here's a slashdot post by myself from 2001

The links are long since broken (and I said Russia, but it could equally of been China, I wasn't 100% sure where I was), but here are links to two of the photos that I put back online recently:

• Grid lines
• Big diamond structure

-- Pete.

They're both electric car sharing efforts, and just because the one is Paris is bigger, that doesn't make it "first".

Or are you one of those people who also think that the iPod was the "first" portable mp3 player?

-- Pete.

And looking at a more recent example I've been seeing Zen Cars around Brussels recently too.

This is definitely not a "World's First"...

-- Pete.

For instance, it is often said the US has high crime rates. WRONG, the murder rate in the US vs Holland is pretty much the same.

What a load of bull - check the statistics, and you'll find the murder rate in the USA is approximately 5 times higher per capita than in the Netherlands.

• Murders in USA in total, and per 100K gives well over 5 per 100,000
• Total murders in the Netherlands (work out per 100K population, assume population of 16.5 Million gives less than 1 per 100,000)

I suggest you do some research and adjust your world view.

-- Pete.