The argument for using RAID6 (2 parity drives instead of 1) is that with the larger drives (1TB and up) if you have a hardware failure in one of your large drives (probably all from the same lot, possibly with sequential serial numbers and all with an effectively identical environmental history), your odds of having a second failure during a very long rebuild are not negligible. Your example of effectively 1% per hour on the rebuild should scare the crap out of many people - particularly if they've also been sloppy about backing up that 12+TB of data which is pretty likely.

Basically, if you have a pretty full RAID5, replace it with a RAID6 of significantly larger drives - get the extra redundancy, get some growth space, and take that RAID5 somewhere else - preferably preserved as a snapshot or used as a seed for offsite backup if you don't already have a good backup routine.

The Guardian article being referenced is probably Dan Gillmor's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/dec/23/ebook-price-swindle-publishing">The great ebook price swindle</a>. You can find a lot more about this by paying attention to the online writings of various authors, including <a href="http://kriswrites.com/">Kristine Kathryn Rusch</a> who write about the business of writing as well as being a (widely) published author.

Is it just me or has Vanity Fair been coming out pretty consistently with worthwhile stuff for the past few months or more? I'm starting to feel like I should be subscribing to support them.

Given what's being listed elsewhere on the front page regarding advertising based on your purchasing history I'd like to know who's going to be monitoring the privacy practices of the credit card companies.

What frosts me is that every flippin' clock radio out there that has external input ("Aux") for connecting an MP3 player or phone also has a nice big iPod dock either on the front or on the top. I don't want a useless-to-me chunk of exposed connectors on the most obvious part of my equipment, particularly when it means that they've made the display smaller and less visible so it's not blocked by the piece of Apple equipment that I would never purchase. I want a radio with decent speakers, a display that I can see from the shower on the other side of the room and either Aux input, Bluetooth or both so I can link my phone to it for music, podcasts, etc. and I'd rather not have to buy a Chumby to get it.

Learn something new every day - I was going to suggest "sudo bash", others have suggested "sudo -i" and "sudo su" which should also work. All will give you a root shell.

Seriously, you should be able to learn to handle the difference between small push buttons on a phone (at an angle that PC keyboards don't use) and keypad buttons on a keyboard. Also, why would you need to be doing enough on a phone keypad to make that an issue? If you're doing telemarketing calls or the like you shouldn't be using a plain phone, use software.

In general, this goes beyond a waste of time into the level of trolling.

While hearing aids (and many other medical items and drugs) are ludicrously overpriced, the article is too shallow to merit the front page of /. - it's around what I'd expect of a USA Today slow news day item if only they didn't have ads from hearing aid manufacturers.

As Limor at Lady Ada determined with the MintyBoost, the Apple devices do some funky things depending on the level of voltage on the data lines. Details at http://www.ladyada.net/make/mintyboost/icharge.html with links to additional resources as well.

It may be an approved screenshot, but Samsung should be making the point that it *isn't* a screenshot of what most people see and use on their phone, where the iPhone picture is. That's a picture of the application listing rather than the home screen.