The good thing about Time Machine is that the OS installer will recognize it's backup volume and allow you to do a full restore without first having to wait for the whole OS X to be installed.

Oh, and I agree - TM is a consumer-grade backup solution, and will sometimes fail silently.

I was bummed after looking over the LFS intro, in that you aren't building Linux on a bare machine -- you're starting with a pre-installed distro of some kind.

I would be more interested in replicating the process that Torvalds went through when creating the OS.

"Your iPhone could KILL YOU! Tune in for our special report, today at 5:30."

Mac Mini Server gets you a quad-core Intel i7 (double that number of threads if you enable hyper threading) for $999. Turn them on their side and you can stack 11 of them in the width of a standard 19" rack (will be 6U high or so). That's 44 (or perhaps 88) cores for under $11,000.

Other pluses: 900W power consumption when running at 100% utilization, idle is much much lower. Comes with dual hard drives that can be mirrored for reliability. Gigabit ethernet and 4 USB ports are available. When your work with them is done, you can repurpose them as ordinary desktop machines - just add monitor, keyboard + mouse.

The navy spent years figuring out how to refuel and transfer high-value parts between two ships at sea. But they don't transfer large cargo containers, which these people would need to do in order to feed 600+ developers, staff and crew.

And then there's the garbage issue. You can't just dump garbage over the side any more. You need to package it up and bring it back to port when you return. Oh. Wait. These people can't dock the ship anywhere, because hardly anyone on board will have a visa. So they need to move a container full of trash across to the resupply ship, too.

This was a dumb idea in 2005, and it's still dumb today.

If any of these employees are over 40, then Zynga is in for a world of hurt.
(40+ is a protected class under EEO law)

This is a pretty good indication that Duqu is weaponized malware -- being able to load modules specific to each target, where the target is (as far as anyone knows) foreign governments.

>> “There has been a lot of criticism about the watch list,” claiming that it is “haphazard,” he said. “But what this illustrates is that there is a very detailed process that the F.B.I. follows in terms of nominations of watch-listed people.”

Which is fine and all. But we don't believe you.

The 10-hour battery life is a non-starter for me. That means you can't go to Europe and back, without dragging the charger along.

I'd much rather they introduced a 10-inch version of the current Kindle.

in his novel "Memoirs Found in a Bathtub", where a bacteria voraciously ate paper, causing paperalysis for the humans (no identity papers, no money, no books) and the death of the Earth's biosphere (because it ate all the trees).

Right now in Texas, we're hitting over 104F in the afternoons, several degrees higher than body temperature. Would the buttons be cooled by people touching them?

USAA's decision to not participate in this scam/scheme is nice to see, and reinforces my decision to get a card through them.
If you're eligible, go for joining.

Chip H.

Following my usual policy of dividing any optimistic-sounding number quoted by a government official in half, I give it 25 years before someone else (Russia? China? Uzbekistan?) takes the lead.

I know someone who was fired for being a gun owner. All it took was someone saying "I feel threatened by him" and security walked him out.

Wrong? Damn straight. But there's no recourse.

Only with better encryption and anonymization.
- The oppressive governments aren't likely to shut down voice PTT, as they depend on it too.
- Laptops either come with a modem built-in (older ones) or a USB modem (pretty cheap)

Yes, bandwidth will suck and you're back in the store & forward days. But the mesh layout means no single point of failure.