First off, 2 rj45 per room and 4 in the living room seems to me as excessive. Yes, a hard line is better then wifi, but that's a lot of copper to put in "just in case" when small hubs are cheap.

Second, and more importantly, you don't want a rack. Racks and rack mount gear are sexy but only make sense if space is really tight. Like in a colo rack or if you have 1000 servers. Plain old tower cases on a shelf is more then adequate and costs a lot less.

In my basement I had two closets that were back to back (well, side to side) so I knocked the wall down between them. Now they form a corridor for my gear. I built some deep cantelevered shelves to put the computers on. All of them are in mid or full tower cases, with the back-end towards the main door, front end towards the secondary door. Getting at the back is IMHO more important then the front.

I also sound proofed the space and the main door. The shelving is on hard rubber mats (cow row) to avoid vibration transmission.

For cooling and ventilation, I have the secondary door open with 2 120mm fans in a small box I build. I stretched some old stockings over the intake for filters. The scondary door leads into my storage space which never gets above 20C ever.

I take it your friends don't watch Mythbusters.

I get the impression that leaks are highly dependent on your water. My associate is on a private well and needs to replace his take every 10 years. He's had 2 tank leak all over the floor. His current tank lives in a small swiming pool.

However, he is pretty much the only person I know who has had a leaking tank.

Correction, the fact it is now economically viable to extract shale oil is proof that we are in peak oil. Peak oil does not mean NO MORE OIL! It means OIL SUPPLY STABLE. Combine a stable supply with rising demand and you get rising prices. And hey, look, we are at/near all time highs for crude oil prices.

Elections Canada runs all the elections. And they are is independent from Government.

King Harper of the Republican Party of Canada. Christ what an asshole.

The sense of disembodiment you talk about is nothing unique to Internet natives. I'm over twice your age and I can remember experiencing the same thing back in the early 90s. William Gibson noticed the same thing happening to people playing Space Invaders even earlier. Which lead him to invent the term "Cyberspace."

They say that the best defence is an offence. Why not go on the a counter-attack. Let's make Internet access, or simply access to adequate telecommunication, a fundamental human right. This would protect net-neutrality and work against arbitrary disconnection laws.

This is why you put your cards in a SmartCard GUARD. I bought 12 of them, am using only 3. The others I hand to friends and relations when I think to check their credit cards for the RFID logo.

BTW, fraud isn't the only problem with being able to read these cards from a distance. The info could also be used for surveillance.

This is where Google Wave would have shined. That Google pulled the plug on this amazing product is proof of their lack of vision.

What we need is to extend copyright, broader and stronger patents and generaly to beef up all IP laws. How about automatic injunctions for all accusations of patent infringement, like SOPA and PIPA gives copyright holders? That should spur on innovation!

Oh, and cut taxes and gov't spending!

Someone please apply a clue bat to the poster! I have to spend a lot of energy convincing company presidents and so on that moving their users from MSIE to Firefox is a good thing. For all sorts of reasons. And here is a Mozilla team member undermining my work by claiming the exact oposite.

The CD levy makes a good deal of sense. I download an album in MP3 format (currently legal in Canda) and burn it to CD that I paid the levy on, and I know the copyright holder will be renumerated.

Now, I assume the levy is then split between copyright holders proportional to their physical sales. Which means that if you download an obscure album, they won't get money. So I always buy album's from smaller, less well known acts on physical media. Ideally at their concert.

Note that IIRC, the RIAA has spoken out against the CD levy. It makes suing music fans in Canada so much harder for them.

What is a yet?
Why do the Sauds have one?
Why does the Saud's yet need to be told of this?

Given that a 2x4 doesn't mesure 2 inches by 4 inches, and hasn't in 50+ years, and that 2x4s are availble as such in metric Canada anyway... wait, what was the question?