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Spot on. The true test of someone who has clue is if they will admit when they don't know something. The people who claim to know everything often know the least.

No where is Linux defined as a server OS. Linux may be used primarily on servers but it is also used on desktops,imbedded systems and phones. Linux is many things to many people.

I think you'll find your average /. reader is not an average member of the public. The distribution doesn't surprise me at all.

The problem is sex offenders are not like other offenders. Murders actually have an extremely low re-offense rate. The re-offense rate for sex offenders is unfortunately high. This is why, despite my strong civil liberties leanings, I support a sex offenders register and other measures to keep an eye on them. The alternatives I can think of are all worse for the offenders themselves.

Sometime around 1995 I fixed a broken Linux system with nothing more than echo & cat when every other utility was inoperative and I didn't have any other boot media.

What's paper?

While I might agree about the UI & usability problems in OSS I can't agree about innovation. OSS licencing is being used by a very large number of IT research projects. Look at the work being done in areas like "single system image" (SSI). The serious work is all being done on Open source OSes.

Well the OP was talking about OSS conferences. While a few hangers-on will be around an OSS conference will tend to be filled by people involved with OSS.

Also this whole "most people don't care" argument isn't a very strong one. Most people don't care where their food comes from until it stops coming. See the problem?

Good point re food security. I don't know the numbers for NZ (I am going to research it) but Australia produces enough food to feed 100 million people (for a population of 21 million) so good food security there too. Violence in western countries (except perhaps the US) is overstated by the media. Police data shows a steady decline in violent crime over the last few decades. Various changes in society make certain sorts of violent crime untennable. Robbing a bank ain't what it used to be. The one real problem Australia has is water security and that is _finally_ being addressed properly as a result of the recent drought that scared the pants off several levels of government.

Your point is? A lot of backup solutions that are sold are awful and fail to work properly under real world conditions.

Network mirroring like this is no backup at all. An error will be carried across by the synchronisation. This is one of several common mistakes made about backups. The system you describe is a variation on "using RAID 1 as a backup system". I am glad to hear you use a tape library as well. I hope the tapes go offsite.

I really hope you are joking. Here is a talk I did on backups recently for a LUG: http://www.timetraveller.org/talks/backup_talk.pdf Please download and read this. It states explicitly why your statement is false.