While consumer drives overall might not have a significantly higher failure rate than enterprise ones, I can think of a few differences:
a) consumer drives are nearly always 7200rpm for normal models, 5400rpm for green or laptop models which directly influences the number of small random disk operations that can be performed per second and the overall maximum throughput. Enterprise drives typically range from 18000rpm at the very high end to 7200rpm at the absolutely lowest end, with 10K rpm probably the most common for bulk storage and 15000rpm for data intensive settings.
b) Enterprise drives are usually available for multiple connection types (fiber/SAS/SATA) whereas consumer drives are nearly always SATA only.
c) For some drive vendors, SMART reporting is much more consistant for enterprise drives. Also, the number of extra sectors on the drive made available for bad blocks to ensure the full capacity of the drive and to remap defective sectors can be significantly higher.
d) The newest difference between enterprise and consumer drives is that some manufactures are intentionally disabling typical enterprise firmware features on the consumer models, drive commands that are helpful for hardware raid/etc.
e) Guarenteed repair warranties on enterprise drives are frequently at least 1-2yrs longer than consumer
f) More attention is usually given to the impact of constant drive usage in the design of enterprise drives than consumer. While the average failure rate for drives in a 2-3yr timeframe may not be that different, I wouldn't be surprised if usage patterns over 5-10yrs resulted in a significant divergence. It's not that unusual for enterprise storage systems with dozens to hundreds of drives being in operation for at least 5 years, and frequently 10 years.

Also, I'd be curious about temperature variation tolerence. The longer a drive survives, the more likely it is to be exposed at least at some point to a brief period when normal building a/c fails or the computer chassis fans/etc fail....Not a few datacenter drive replacements have been required after datacenters have had power blips that resulted in a/c going offline for 10-20 minutes. This may not be a big deal for modern consumer drives where usage is relatively minimal and the drive is at least partially in low power mode.

What we need is a mandatory uniform labeling and advertising requirement for internet access services.
We have nutrition labels telling us what is in food.
Whe have labels telling us exactly what is and not included when we buy a car.

There can be perfectly legitimate reasons for internet access providers to block or prioritize traffic. Consumers may even want to pay for a cheaper plan that has more limitations.

As long as it is simple and easy for a consumer to compare and see what they are buying, the government doesn't need to be involved in what internet access services can and can not be sold. If we ever get to a point where internet access impacts consumer safety, there may be a minor role for ensuring specific sites and services are accessible - but there really isn't any reason to treat the internet any differently than a myriad of more mature industries.

Creating a rule specifically addressing video services is a bad law, and is crony capitalism. A few generations ago, the American voting public would have understood this and punished politicians that tried to make an end run....now we are all just a mob that opportunistic politicians cater to based on whatever is the fad of the momement. We are getting the government we deserve.

Redstates want to keep nuclear, and even *gasp* coal because they believe society needs jobs and cheap energy to grow and be stable.....so, yeah, they don't overregulate and hound the industries to death with mini-taxes meant to increase costs under the guise of safety....

Blue states - however......for them, the sanctity of gaia and a pure green earth is more important than anything else so......in those areas, they gladly double and triple energy prices and make do with much higher levels of unemployment and consider the nuclear/coal industries, when they are not banned all together, as free sources of additional state taxes....any possible violation is a way for the state to charge another fee....hip hip hooray. Whatever....it's not like someone else won't end up burning all that coal and it all goes into the same atmosphere...witness california coasts getting polution via ocean winds from china and having to export its manufacturing jobs elsewhere.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but budgets themselves are meaningless as far as funding the government goes. What actually counts are funding bills for the individual major departments of the federal government. To my knowledge, it was only the house that went through the effort of sending those real funding bills to the senate where the senate tabled them. The house ignored this because that is what they are supposed to do....for the legitimate funding process to work, the senate needs to take up the house bills, modify them as they see fit, and then send back to house - if both chambers are roughly in agreement, then for each bill the congress selects a comittee to merge both bills into one and then have both chambers approve the resulting merged department budget. So, if I'm following this correctly, the senate actually hasn't done anything necessary to fund the government this year....except to request that the house avoid doing any work and pass a combined bill that funds all departments at the inflated budgets agreed several years ago when democrats had the super majority and a major stimulus was passed minus some meager spending cuts/sequester the house did manage to get through during the last debt increase vote... That hardly seems responsible... I can't see how the senate can legitimately complain at all about the house if the above is true.

Sure, let's believe there is some neutral news site that we can all agree to use for news....

But, first, let's agree to get rid of the partisan sources:
NPR, CNN, nytimes, dailykos, slate, politico, washingtonpost on the left
foxnews, breitbart, redstate, hotair, instapundit on the right

What is left?

Thanks for pointing out the need to ban references to these sites....it's a good things our founding fathers agreed to ban unapproved speech...we definitely should not trust even our adults to properly filter out biased news sources....

Republican members of the house were elected to do two things:

a) cut spending, as the house has primary responsibility in the constitution for the budget....this is where they will frequently make a stand. Unfortunately, the democrats boosted the budget substantially using the financial crisis as an excuse and have yet to restore normal spending levels. They also refuse to follow the normal budget process. When the republicans in the house pass a budget for negotiations, the senate sends it back with major spending increases and then refuse to consider any cuts. This forces the house to make a decision every year about whether they are willing to shut down the government over the senates irresponsibility and intrangence. We're lucky the republicans have been as patient as they have the last several years.

b) Stop or significantly reduce the overwhelming sweep of obamacare. The president and senate has refused to negotiate.

Given the arrogance of the above behavior by the senate and president, I see no reason whatsoever why the house should play mr nice....they have the responsibility for choosing which laws are funded. They've chosen to fund everything else but the health care law. That's generous. If you want to change that, ask your senator and president to negotiate.

Oh, stop that junk about obamacare originally being a republican idea. Did you ever say something stupid and than have someone else make it 100x worse, proclaim it loudly to the world, and then blame it all as your idea?

Yes, one republican think tank suggested that an exchange type system where people are required to purchase health care might be an alternative to Clinton's health proposals....it went nowhere in the federal government, and the think tank later said they were stupid to have suggested it.

Romney implemented his own system in Massachussets without approval from natioanl republicans, but a) MA is a blue state and is far from mainstream republican opinion, b) Romneycare was put in place to prevent democrats in Massachussets from implementing a far worse system, and c) Many republicans refused to vote for Romney in the presidential election due to his involvement in romneycare. Lastly, there is quite a bit of feedback that suggests Massachussets has had to make major changes to keep their system functional, and despite that the cost has been much higher than originally assumed. Many of the proponents are no longer as fervant.

That democrats are now saying obamacare is based on republican ideas and thus the republicans should approve it is pure partisan drivel.

The house is not obligated to fund any law. It has chosen to fund everything in government, but some aspects of a single law that relates to the federal government takeover of the health care industry.

The senate has decided that funding for that law is so important, that they're willing to shutdown the government over it.

That's why the government shut down.

+1 Apparently someone at Yahoo just thought if they could get enough new flickr users, it would bring in more profit for yahoo.....so they stupidly went for an over the top UI + essentially unlimited uploading plan that has made it too cumbersome for established users to keep using the site for what they were doing before (sharing photos, participating in discussion groups, and commenting on/browsing other photos)...

Your refutal of the maxime shareholder profit argument may be technically correct, but it's probably simplistic....whenever an officer of a company makes a decision that can be questioned as not maximizing profit, he is opening himself up to the possibility of a shareholder lawsuit. If the officer is the CEO, the risks are even greater.

So guess what happens...the ceo is advised by his lawyer how to behave, the ceo advises his subordinate managers how to behave, and the a new culture trickles down...

No one is to blame but the system here.

Bah, things could be worse.....consider being a republican in the northern portion of San Diego:
City Council Rep is a democrat --pretty much votes opposite of what I would
City Mayor is a corrupt democrat -- he's bringing city business to a halt and making San Diego a laughing stalk nationwide
State Legislature is entirely controlled by democrats and veto proof majority -- destroying the economy of the state
State Governor is democrat and a great liar saying he has balanced the state budget while just pushing the expenses into future years, raising taxes, or making county governments take over state responsibilities.
Congressional Representative is a democrat - says the right thing, but always votes opposite of what I would
State Senators (both) are democrats -- By my standards, I consider both of them crazy
National President is a hardcore democrat

There isn't anyone in power from my local city to state to congress to president that in anyway represents my beliefs...And, I get to pay high taxes for this representation...

I stopped going to the movie theater a few years ago, like many.....now if I like a movie, I wait for it to be released for the Kindle Fire and watch it there or download it from Amazon to the tivo connected to the plasma tv(only tv in the house which is seeing less and less use).

In any case, to get me to purchase, a movie should have most of the following traits:

Plot -- Actually exist, ideally I want to be surprised rather than guess the ending within the first 20 minutes

Relevance - Zero Dark Thirty wasn't an awesome movie, but it was very relevant and therefore got the cash.

Artistry/Time - Movies should take as much time as needed to tell their story and be comprehensive with multiple conflicts/concepts/etc, I'm not going to pay just because this years superhero movie is out..... Older classic movies were much longer than most movies today, and even the best movies of the last twenty years have been somewhat longer than the normal movie that is released which must be between 100-120 minutes regardless of how much has to be cut.

Politics -- Movies are produced to reflect the politics of whatever the college age generation is at the time (they are the ones who have the time and motivation to go to the theater)...In the 80's, we had some modestly conservative movies come out, but still most movies showed both sides of issues and tried not to be too patronizing....now, most movies lean substantially left....and talk down to anyone who disagrees... If one isn't an eco-fascist, Avatar loses a significant amount of its appeal.

Character -- Movies are so expensive these days that one will feel guilty buying it just for oneself, which means that movies that I feel comfortable sharing with my kids are more likely to get the cash..... A significant number of movies are failing here.

The problem with this justification, even if it is true, is that it assumes that we can trust our government with ever increasing amounts of power and surveilance over lives despite the fact that we know that more power = more corruption, that government will inherently misuse the power and tools it has access to, and that polarization/decline in morality in our culture is resulting in our leaders feeling the have more leeway to push the boundaries of what is permissable. And, just timing wise....this leak coming right after we've found out that the president has been using the IRS to punish his political enemies and ensure his opponents power was reduced during the recent election....

Basically, what you are saying might make sense if the culture and ethics of Americans and our leaders was beyond reproof, with the government we have --- it is more likely to be used to supress domestic dissent (to maintain internal power) rather than to stop our external enemies.

In my experience:
- For business and critical home office connections, reliability is the single most important aspect when evaluating internet connectivity options
- Due to the telecom deregulation bill in the 90's, the major phone companies have essentially killed off all competition for DSL and relegated DSL as a consumer technology where the emphasis is high bandwidth, low cost....reliability has plummeted, phone company can arbitrarily take down DSL for 24-48hrs to do upgrades/maintenance and there is nothing you can do about it other than get a pittance level SLA refunds later. Promised repair times are meaningless for DSL.
- Cable Internet Connections are even worse, they are shared and latency can vary by time of day....if you are lucky, you can upgrade to a business cable connection...but you are unlilkey to get a high uplink speed and cable companies were really not designed to provide good customer service. Some cable companies also offer fiber or gigE services which are not shared and provide real advantages...but this is hit or miss based on your location. And, until recently -- too expensive. We've just reached the point where they are a better deal than cheap bonded t-1.
- Bonded T-1 historically been the best solution for those needing 4.5Mbps or less, 2-3 seperate dedicated lines and the routers automatically adjust if one or several lines go up/down...packets fragments are reordered and checksummed on each end, there are good built in diagnostics, and phone companies are usually exceptionally diligent about fixing most T-1 issues within 4hrs. Bonded T-1's are one of the few areas where you can find reasonable SLA's ....e.g. get much of a months bill refunded if service is down for an extended period. Unfortunately, bonded t-1's are becoming somewhat less reliable as customer centric t-1 companies like speakeasy are being purchased by the telecoms and then sucked into crappy business practices that companies like megapath offer.

So, bonded t1 is OK for the time being, but I expect most customers are in process or planning a switch to fiber/gigE once they can get the SLA's and availability at the locations of interest.

Back when electronics or anything new/important came with massive well written documentation...
2nd or 3rd grade, Ti-99/4a, Basic Programming Book that came with the computer
Litterally the first non-childrens book I ever read
It took me 2 years to get through the entire book
By 4th-5th grade, I was programming my own clones of whatever was the popular game of the day on a timex sinclair w/ 16K ram extender
Compute and similar magazines were a great help
My dad was disappointed that I had stayed with basic rather than learning assembly language....
Later got a PC and learned C