Take a brief pause between "Free" and "NAS" ... problem solved.

Lessons learned from my dabbling with FreeNAS (and having hardware failure).

* Use generic HDD controllers that are supported in the box. (Using a 3rd party controller and driver, only to discover that when it reports an error, it becomes unavailable altogether, reboot to start again)

* Understand the features you are using. When I started, I configured a ZFS array with two hot spares, when a couple drives failed, the hot spares didn't activate, and I was stuck...

* Practice a version migration early on.

* Use a motherboard with ECC Ram if you're using ZFS, I can't understate this enough. AMD CPU + ASUS Motherboard seems to be your best bet here for Unregistered ECC memory in terms of bang for the buck.

* Use as much memory as possible... if you can use 32GB of ram, do so.

In general, it was fun while it lasted, right now, I put 4x 4TB drives in my old Synology 409 box, and it's running okay... I'm going to get one of the 12-drive synology boxes in a few months and test my old drives, putting them all in that moving forward. I really don't have the time and patience for dealing with a homebrew NAS.

I don't mean for this to discourage anyone, only pointing out that it's sometimes far easier to buy an appliance that DIY.

What do you mean you don't have a smart phone license? No smart phone!?!? What are you communist?

Funny... Police cruisers can look up your driver's license based off of your Social Security number or Driver's License number (if you know it)... I've been pulled over when I'd forgotten mine, and there was no problem. Not sure what problem this really solves except maybe more invasive government.

It's not even just windows... there's a lot of code that with compatibility can be retooled to any new x86 platform... and there's a lot of such code that wasn't written with portability in mind.

And for some there are other genetic conditions... knees that pop out of their sockets (incredibly painful) under even modest stress loads, and a relatively high weight for example. I've been over 400# and under 330# over a dozen times in the past decade and a half. Every time I start getting more active, I get injured. Last time I went for a longer walk, I had blisters (I'm diabetic with some advanced metabolic syndrom issues)... I've been changing a bandage on a small ulcer in my foot for the better part of two years... I've eliminated most of the starches from my diet altogether, and have a minimum of carbs in general from non-whole sources that are also higher in fiber.

It isn't nearly as easy as some make it out to be... I wish some people that think it was could have their knee dislocated every time they try to run or go up more than a flight of stairs, and see how that feels. The only time I even resembled a normal weight in my life was when I swam for 3+ hours a day on top of football practice in my mid-later teens.

Their sales (of other company's goods) are still very much in the black... iirc, aws is too... where they seem to be failing is in capturing an open market for their hardware. TBH, they really need to clean up their interfaces for the video/audio services, and offer their apps for regular Android devices, or get the play store on theirs.

They'd only need to cut their own hardware (beyond the kindle), and possibly their streaming services and they could be well into the black.

For me it was about two and a half weeks of feeling ill, back in January (apparently a more harsh variety)

You do realize that the flu killed more people in the 1900's than all the explosives, bullets and other tools of war combined, right?

I think the opposite happens far more, that people refer to a cold that has them down for a day or two as the flu so as not to seem like a slacker by the same metric. I had the flu in January, and could not really function well at all for two and a half weeks.

Not to mention the fact, when people have a common cold for a couple days, they often refer to it as "having the flu" ... Having gotten the flu back in January, and the two and a half weeks it took me out for, I can say it really isn't that mild generally.

It's funny, but I actually disagree with you on most of these points... I hate the UI formerly known as Metro as much as anyone in Windows 9, though I kind of like Unity... I think Windows 7's, or Win8 + ClassicShell better, but how I use them are very similar.. my most common apps are docked to the taskbar, and for those that aren't, I'll hit the win/meta key then type the first few characters of what I'm wanting to bring up...

Firefox is for the most part outpacing Chrome in terms of performance and stability for the past couple releases... I actually really like Chrome's UI, though I don't like some of the tweaks they've been making to the menu structure, I do like it better. As for the Firefox UI, I can only hope they finally unify the address and search bars like Chrome has done. I don't dislike IE as much as I used to, still won't use it as much as I really like Chrome and Firefox's plugin options far more.

Windows 8.1 with ClassicShell is pretty nice imho... you really need a fairly decent machine with okay graphics though. I'd say that I am getting far more comfortable under a unixy environment, my laptop is OSX, home desktop is Win7, home htpc (which I am using now, and most often) is Ubuntu, and at work is Win8.1. They are all different with pluses and minuses.

I think that windows brings an aweful lot to the table... that said, I am more and more comfortable setting up linux for some friends and family... ChromeOS brings this a long way, even though it is missing a decent imap/pop3 mail client.

DisneySearch.com?q=wwii+holocost

Results:
1. _It didn't really happen..._
2. _Join our anglo pride group_

.....

Sorry, it may be in bad taste, and the Disneys aren't really in control anymore, but it had to be done.

I like Hangouts a lot, and the kinks in the Google Voice integration on my phone are finally mostly worked out. I do think that RTC is important, MS being late to the game was able to look at the problems, and both Google and Mozilla agree, which is why ORTC is coming into play... similar to how IndexedDB came out after other implementations. The crappy part is I'm still stuck supporting IE8 and IE9... so it will be close to a decade before I can really use this for certain things.

Other issues with WebRTC not withstanding, there are some compelling ideas in there.

Easy... get one of these automated cars driving into nascar... if it makes it through a season at least placing in the top 5, and no accidents, it's safe.