If it's windows 7, why are you even bothering to register/activate it seeing as you're just going to reload from an image? FWIW, I've had my son's computer running win7 pro for 6 months without activating it. (Because he was tending to get viruses from "free game" websites, arg). No usability problems at all. Unless you count MSSE not working a problem. Nothing a reload wouldn't fix anyways.

Just out of curiosity, what would happen if a bit had changed over at BB's end? Would it then sync the BB's version of the file over to the client? Also, what about if both ends change at the same time (Highly unlikely, I know). Which side's version would be preferred?

You got a little mixed up on your RAID levels.

RAID 1 is mirroring, so you'd get (45 * 3TB) / 2 = 67.5TB

RAID 0 is concatenating, so you'd get 45 * 3TB = 135TB

You really wouldn't want to do RAID0 for a 'backup' array. :)

Well, there's your problem right there!

Yes, PCs "break". Caps go bad, fans seize (without the owner's knowing), heat sinks become detached.

After repairing computers for 12 years, if you can think of something that's happened to a computer - I've seen it happen. The fact that you have 20 year old working computers doesn't suprise me at all.

I had a gentleman bring in a 486/25 SX (Circa '92 or so). Ran perfectly. No real dust buildup, all original parts. Windows 95 even booted up fine. But I have to tell you, that's a total and complete anomaly. The last time I saw a running 486 was about 10 years ago, and the last time I saw one in that condition was when I was still in high school in the early 90's.

Modern consumer-level computers tend to last about 4 years or so. Heck, even server-grade parts tend to fail with alarming regularity. Honestly, I don't think they're much better than their desktop brethren, just more expensive and oddly enough in more minimal (Re: Cheaper) packaging.

Not only that, but it's also impossible to PUG heroics in BC. I know, I've camped for hours (Admittedly, as DPS) with my aff lock waiting for someone - anyone - on any server - to also queue for them. It just ain't happening.

So the only way you can reliably get into the BC heroics is via either a specialty guild, or attempting (ROFL) to convince your guild that BC stuff is going to be "fun" when they're grinding to get >5k GS to go do ICC (hahaha, sure..)

Anyways, that's what really ticked me off right before I quit about 8 or so weeks ago. After a week of queueing while grinding quests, I did a grand total of... *1* BC heroic. yay.

Pretty much the only "easy" stuff is crap that you use to level. Even the drops in the instances totally suck, and as far as I can tell, the dungeons only exist so you have something, ANYTHING to do after you've wasted all the time you could grinding rep/quests/etc trying to get into the final heroics/raids.

Blah, sorry.

Really? I've been using ubuntu since about 6.04, and I haven't really noticed a dumbing down of the interface. Sure, the default theme's been cleaned up (and changed every damn version), but all the options are still there in System-> Preferences / Administration. The synaptic package manager is still there in 10.10, and the terminal is still included by default, as is aptitude (Or did I install aptitude?).

Anyways, Ubuntu getting easier to use isn't a bad thing. It's not dumbing down, you can still manually do anything you can do in a debian install. It's just not geared towards the hands-on powerusers who want to micromanage their desktop. What's so bad about that? :)

Huh, sort of like... Libraries?

I'm not condoning the actions (or inaction) of people that result in private/personal information being broadcast over wifi.. But, consider that most routers are setup insecure by default AND the people they are targeted to generally are NOT geeks like us, it's reasonable to assume that the people do NOT know that their information is publicly accessible.

I'm not going to put out an analogy, but keep in mind all of yours included someone actively giving out their information.

With these incidents via wifi, the people passively gave it out their information. They likely had no idea until this google thing, and even MORE likely is most people that google got packets from STILL don't know. Why? Because they're not geeks like us, and as such, likely don't even read the stories. Even if they did read the story on what google did, and how badly people's routers are set up, they probably wouldn't think it even applies to them.

Luckily, my first point is getting redressed. I know new linksys routers support a secure setup mechanism, and attempts to set the wep/wpa level to the highest it can and remain compatible with the laptop/device used to set it up. But there's still a long ways to go before the general non-geek populace understands what this jargon means for them.