Actually there is no reason to be freaked out by their pricing. Just buy the number of instances that you need (one for example) and don't set up any auto-scaling. This way if you get slashdoted your instance will just fail as a normal server would and you will incur no charges. Also no service...

I have worked with amazon aws and with dedicated server providers. Amazon has been much faster and reliable.

Furthermore, the way to protect your life savings from a potential business failure is not through inefficient procurement practices. Just incorporate, otherwise you will be open to all kind of risks (must of it unknown to you, and uninsured)

Your exceptions are either misunderstandings (i.e. "GMO product with built-in insecticides or herbicide resistance[...] was no doubt heavily sprayed with herbicides"

I recommend "DNA: The Secret of Life" by Watson for a new perspective on GMO. It's well written and will clarify a lot of aspects about it, and other more interesting subjects.

I am not american but I always watch closely news about the gun control in the US. I don't really like that the US is heading the way of other civilised countries in this regard. I know that US bashing is popular these days(since Iraq, GWB etc.) but the reality is that the rights that people enjoy there have always been important for the rest of the world. More precisley that country has always been a beacon of hope to opressed people around the world, and a source of concern to all goverments who would take their freedoms, or continue denying them. No man is an island, no country is ever trully a hermit kingdom. As long as american citizens enjoy certain rights there is hope for every other opressed man around the world. This is especially important in lights of american rights guarantees (some of do not even exist in most countries, and others are "implict", i.e. they can be taken away when the goverment no longer considers them so) and american conviction that they have a duty to promote their ideals around the world.

I don't know if this is really that relevant to this discussion. But the point of my message to americans is that not all foreigners are "america hating/bashers". We are not all statists (even left-wingers like me). It is american conviction and courage that dragged a lot of the world out of darkness. I am from eastern europe and I know first hand what this means.

I really think it is important that you know that the right to bear arms is not just an american issue. It is a human rights issue in my view. When this right will dissapear in the US it will probably dissapear from the entire world.

If you are from the US then keep fighting for your rights. At least you are in position to defend them, or at least to have a discussion about them. Most other people don't have that choice.

Mod parent up. I know a company that does this and it is really convenient. You want some software? Go to a web site, download, get key, install.

Actually in the case of EC2 the smart thing would have been to have your instances spread over different availability zones...

feeding the troll: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_speed.html

I don't think this is correct. The SELECT list does impact the performance of the query because if it requires un-indexed columns that are not used any other clause(WHERE, FROM) than a lookup or a table scan will be needed to retrieve the values. This being said the only way that removing a column form the select list of a query will make it slower is if the query planner has some bugs :)

Can someone explain this? I was under the impression that having an IPv6 address is exactly like having a public IPv4 address now (if your software can handle it). That is everyone can get in/out and you can easily host your own server and stuff..

You need to have your head examined.

At 60 FPS, a frame is 16.7 ms long. I.E. adding 7ms to your input latency doesn't even show up on the screen.

Most people in the UK are happy to be profiled in exchange for financial benefits. When the Tesco Clubcard was introduced it was so popular that people stopped shopping at other supermarkets like Sainsburys, which then had to introduce their own "loyalty card" schemes. Tesco announced last year that there are now 16 million active clubcards in the UK. As a comparison point there are around 25 million households in the UK , so a significant number of British households are having their shopping profiled in detail already.

I dont get why you guys are discussing the possiblity of a hydrogen burn/explosion. This would only happen if the hydrogen is stored, and then only if it gets stored in large amounts. At the infinitessimal amounts that appears to be released during this process, it makes no sense to even try to store it beyond what makes for an efficient amount to bother igniting it. Storing hydrogen is impractical at best, and as hydrogen has the smallest possible atomic structure, it can pretty much escape any container, so noone stores hydrogen beyond what they need for immediate use anyway.
So obviously, the hydrogen needs to be used (almost) immediately, and very little if any amount stored. Presumably it would be burned to produce electricity for lights, or during winter for heating the highways, Both of which would produce safer, greener highways. Or during summer and daylight, being transmitted directly into the electric grid, similar to power from water/windmills, wavemachines or solar cells.

I guess I fall under the category of "liberal," although I think in just about any other developed democracy I'd be far closer to the center. And I watch FOX news from time to time, but only in the sense of being fascinated by the train wreck. Maybe there are other liberals who watch for other reasons, but I suspect that is the common one.

Well, let's look at something at the top of the normal list, shall we?

What's at the top of your list? What do you think we should cut?

Regardless of cost, you might not even be able to get business cable unless a lot has changed at Comcast. I had Comcast as a provider in northern Florida several years ago. I wanted to run my own mail and web servers and I was willing to pay the premium for "business" service to get static IPs. One would think that if I had consumer cable internet from them I would be able to upgrade that to business cable. Not so. After several hours being switched from one call center to another it was "determined" that business cable was not available in my area.

Again, this was several years ago and the situation may be different now.