I actually like the contracts and the benefits they provide as they are certainly cheaper for me and the way I use my phone.

Currently I do this:

Every year I pay $200 for the new iPhone.
Then I pay $50/mo for my service which includes minutes and unlimited data.
Then at the end of the year I sell the 1 year old iPhone that I kept in great condition for $300.

So at the end of the year my total cost was $500 (200 + 600 - 300).

If I were to go with no contract a new iPhone would cost me $650 for the same phone. At the end of the year I would still get the same $300 back when I sold it. So I would have paid $350 already. This means my monthly cost for service needs to cost $12.5/mo to make my total cost paid for the year be the same $500 I am paying now with a contract.

The contract discount is worth $450 a year in my case so the monthly cost for the service needs to be $450 less per year in order for the contract and off contract to be the same cost for me.

I linked it before.

https://freedns.afraid.org/dyn...

They have a dynamic IP updater that you can use and so you can just set your nameservers on your godaddy domain to afraid's nameservers and then you will have dynamic IP on your godaddy or anyone else's domain.

Oh OK. If you need more than 1, then that's a fine deal. Personally I use subdomains (which are basically unlimited) for that kind of task with my domain, but that isn't what everyone wants I guess.

Well my first years was $5 (promo code) and the next 2 years have been $10 each so hardly much more expensive in my experience. So it's been $25 for 3 years so far through domain.com for nicko88.com for me.

Why spend $25 when you can get an even better and likely shorter domain form something like godaddy or domain.com for about $8 a year for a .com?

You can use http://freedns.afraid.org/ to make your .com work with a dynamic IP too and that's free.

Check out: http://open-zfs.org/wiki/Main_...
http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/20...

ZoL is very active and very up-to-date. All the versions and compatibility is in sync with Illumos (the main source of OpenZFS) and FreeBSD. You can create and move zpools between these 3 platforms seamlessly.

2 of the main founders and creators of ZFS itself (who used to work for Oracle and wrote ZFS) who now work for Delphix and continue to improve OpenZFS (started with the last open release of Oracle ZFS) in Illumos and have actually made it better than the now closed Oracle ZFS.

See how OpenZFS is actually better than Oracle ZFS now:
http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/20...

Actively adding new features: https://github.com/zfsonlinux/... (Largeblock support to match the newer Oracle ZFS)

Etc...

Maybe if we pray to the ZFS gods Matthew will start implementing block pointer rewrite some day!

Anyways, OpenZFS is very active and kicking, and that includes the Linux port.

I never claimed that it's cheap, but this is usually what people with several TB of storage at home are doing.

$2.50 is cheaper than having to buy another disk if something happens to it.

It's for the convenience of it. If I have a movie library of hundreds of movies. I can find one in an instant and play it on the big screen on my HTPC. I can be at a friends house or a relatives house and pull out my phone and stream it from my server at home and connect it to their TV with HDMI. I can give out a login to friends and family and they can enjoy streaming the movies too.

Then of course there is the piracy option too. $2.50 to store a BluRay is far cheaper than buying one haha.

It's about selection... How am I supposed to predict my mood and know what songs I want to hear in the future and only keep those?

That would be an option IF Netflix had half the movies I want to watch (which it doesn't). Their library is pathetic and their streaming quality (both video and especially audio) is also poor compared to BluRay.

The 2000s called, they want their DVDs back...

It's all about BluRays now and soon 4K video. BluRays are about 30GB-50GB per movie (especially if you want the bonus features for a complete ISO) and 4K will be at least double that too.

And before you suggest it. No I do not want to compress my video. I got the BluRay in the first place because I want the quality. I watch my content on a 136" projector screen and I can tell when it's been compressed.

I have a 20TB array at home and have a separate set of disks I use as an offline offsite backup.

4K movies will be out shortly. We will be looking at 50-100GB per movie. Some people want to backup their disks and have them accessible for their HTPC because its significantly more convenient.

And before you suggest, no I do not want to compress my movies to a lesser quality... That's why I got the BluRay in the first place. Because I want high quality. I watch them on a 136" projection screen. I can tell when it's been compressed...

So what super duper awesome filesystem do you use now that can never have a bug where you lose your data? Or what do you do about theft? fire? PSU taking out your disks?

You need a backup of any data you intend to keep whether you use ZFS or any other data storage system anyways.

Havent heard of mhddfs, thanks. There is also AUFS too.

Why not just output a directory listing to a text file every day to keep track of the files you have?

You can even text diff them and its easy to see what changed.

I have 13.4TB on my CrashPlan account and counting... I've had more than 10TB with them for over a year now. I have a friend with over 20TB with them too. Yes it really is unlimited.

I use the element hider extension a lot to manually hide the advertisement divs on the websites that I visit.

So website designers are going to have to randomize the div IDs or something so that next time I revisit the page the advertisement elements aren't hidden anymore.