WHS is basically just JBOD; I don't feel safe with it. When I was in the beta, they didn't explain exactly where or how files were stored, just that if you weren't using the full capacity of the array, that they were redundantly stored across drives. I like to be able to mount drives under linux to recover files if the OS crashes.

They have some funny testimonials:

Not true, 2-fiber BLSR has just as many fibers in use as a UPSR, and there is no advantage to either one. In a UPSR (let's say OC48), there are 48 STS1 channels available on both the inner and outer rings. The terminating nodes determine which side of the ring to grab a signal from. Channels can be selected from one or both sides of the ring simultaneously.

In a 2-fiber BLSR, you only have the ability to switch the entire OC48 line, but you can run "extra traffic" in the protect channels. Generally half the working channels are normally running in one direction, half the other. During a line switch, only the working channels are run along the active line. Extra traffic is squelched for the duration of the switch.

In a 4-fiber BLSR, you gain the ability to span switch between 2 nodes rather than having to switch the entire ring, but ring switching is available if both your spans between nodes fail. You can also run extra traffic on them.

The latest trend in optical networking is G.709. Most of the time different types of SONET or Ethernet payloads are encapsulated in a G.709 wrapper for transmission across the network. These are generally 1+1 unidirectionally switched.

Exactly, they would have had to known which cables were both the work and protect loops. Definitely suggests insider or former employee. It would have been extremely serendipitous for a random saboteur to have caused such an outage.

Windows 7's voice interpreter is already pretty good; imagine touch with voice. It would be awesome to bundle up my keyboard and mouse and put them away forever, but it seems a few years off still.

I'm very surprised with how complete it is on the MSI Wind U100. The only thing not working right off the bat is the built-in webcam, which I don't use anyway. Also, Nautilus isn't able to connect to my Windows shares when I simply click on them, so I'll have to figure out why. I suspect either Nautilus isn't calling smbclient right or Windows 7's CIFS has compatibility issues with smbclient.

Other than that, suspend works, wireless works, Bluetooth works...and not just works, but works easily with a couple of clicks, which is seldom true for linux distributions. I installed it from a USB flash drive: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.04/beta/ubuntu-9.04-beta-netbook-remix-i386.img

I really don't like this trend, myself. Where are the repositories? Are they different than the default distro's? If I update/patch anything, is it going to break some proprietary software the netbook maker decided to make a dependency for a bunch of other stuff? I could go on and on, but I would really prefer that something like Ubuntu Netbook Remix used by all the netbook manufacturers, without a lot of hackery that kills my ability to update and install new software from the repos.

Linux has a long way to go for the common man. People buy computers with Windows or OSX installed, not linux. If they get linux accidentally, as we already saw with netbooks, they return it. There is so much easy-to-install software available for Windows, the methods while using it are familiar, they're heavily entrenched with the OEMs (and corrupt enough to fight with them over linux if need be), have a lot of money to spend on advertising and legal fees, etc, etc, etc. Moms, dads, and grandparents are never, ever going to download an Ubuntu ISO and try to install it. Why not instead focus on what linux IS good at? For instance, a while back I needed to serve up subdomains that had SSL security enabled for each one on the same IP address. IIS does this with a little metabase hackery, but Apache is completely incapable of it. Keep Windows down in the server market. There aren't any really stand-out "Small Business Server" equivalent distros, either, which is especially maddening considering most small businesses would love a free, stable OS for the services they take for granted.

That's something about the support environment I've worked in that I enjoyed, as well. I think managers who don't meddle with employees all the time and back them up are doing the right thing, and performance becomes peer/pride driven. Sounds like you guys have a good work atmosphere and management.

I flashed my 500GB ST3500320AS with SD1A, and it was rendered useless. After following the Seagate forums on this issue for a while (and noticing the firmware had been removed from the KB article), I decided to call you guys to report mine, since I figured you could use all the data in this situation. First, I was really happy to get an American English speaker who was actually from a city 1 hour away from me. That was very, VERY refreshing, and will likely keep me buying Seagate drives even after this debacle (which vendor hasn't put out a bad batch?). Second, he was really knowledgeable and wasn't condescending or rude about it, even given the enormous workload I'm sure you're all under right now. I do blame Seagate for not testing the SD1A firmware with the 500GB drives, but personally, I was only using mine to test Windows 7, and don't really care about the fresh install. The only negative I see in this situation is that Seagate hasn't provided a link to an ISO for the people who updated to SD1A to roll back to their previous firmware release. To sum it all up, I think it's great that Seagate has identified the issue, and was trying to get us a proactive firmware update before the drives went kaput, and the support folks have been really great, from my perspective.

BigDog was the only one of those that really made me sit up and think, "That thing CANNOT become sentient, or we are DOOMED!"