The post couldn't even get the model number correct. The link to the actual product on Acer's page mentions that the PG model has a multi-touch screen and the DG model is the polarized version which allows for 3D.

is another one

We backup 15TB nightly (using tar over NFS) with BackupPC running on two servers each with 10TB of storage pulling data from a high performance NAS (BlueArc). We retain 30 days of incremental backups and do a full for the various home directories every 30 days.

how do i check for this on RHEL4? There's no *mmap* anywhere under /proc

"women-owned"? Let me guess, Microway.

oops I meant $440

The ES.2 is the ST31000340NS. This is $160 compared to $100 for the cheapest one at cdwg. This is a far stretch from $600 and I'm not even talking about SAS drives. Dell will rape you on those modules!

You must work for one of those contractors that charges the government $100 for hammers. It doesn't take $540 worth of labor to order, unscrew the old drive out of the plastic drive carrier, put the new drive in, and finally put the drive into the poweredge.

Several reasons:

1) I never brought my laptop to class or to campus from my dorms. Most people I see that do this just waste time on facebook, playing wow, or other games. It's an added weight that I hated lugging around. I stored all the data that I needed on a flash drive or on the university's unix systems.

2) There are many courses in engineering and other sciences where software is proprietary, can have high licensing fees, and even if the software is FOSS (as many scientific apps are) can sometimes be difficult to get installed on linux or other OSs for user's who aren't computer savy. There are many universities that run Linux/Unix computer labs and I think these are essential for technical/scientific computing.

Dell does the same thing with their poweredge drive modules and there are no electronics on the back, the sata connections go directly into the backplane . Prices are ridiculously out of whack. A 1TB drive is like $600 for a market priced $100 drive and a $10 piece of plastic and metal. This is why we always purchase the smallest 80 or 160GB drive module and put whatever SATA drive we need in. It's really stupid as are the idiots who purchase the larger storage modules.

These new systems aren't even available on Dell's website yet. The new poweredge machines won't be available until the 30th. Don't know about the workstations.

I work at a large private university and to my knowledge maintain the largest network of Linux/UNIX systems on campus.

I'd like to make an argument that going open source would save the university money and think through a gradual transition process to open source software (starting small, with something like replacing Endnote with Zotero, then MS Office with OpenOffice.org, and so on)

You're doing it wrong. Rather than gradually transition systems away from MSFT and Windows only solutions you need to give them the option to use both. As someone mentioned above it's not about cost but about what people know how to use and are more comfortable with.

What you haven't mentioned is which systems are you targeting? Universities have hundreds of departments and each have their own unique set of computational requirements.

For example, physicists, mathematicians and computer scientists, some chemists, structural biologists, and some electrical engineers can't live without Linux/UNIX systems. Why don't you offer to maintain systems for users like these (you'll need to hire other UNIX people, believe me this isn't a one person job). In fact this is my job and I have other helpers.

However, guys in business & finance, other arts & sciences dept. mechanical engineering and perhaps other engineering fields, and administrators need certain proprietary Windows apps.

I know some people at local universities who have switched machines that were just being used for checking email, web browsing, doing online research, or systems in the library for doing catalog lookups to NX thin clients that connect to a remote Linux desktop.

Another option is to provide a link on Windows desktops in computer labs or in areas where they need Windows apps (e.g. depts mentioned above) that starts Linux in VirtualBox (or your VM of choice) when the user clicks on them. I'm assuming all the users have a centralized storage area, you'll need to integrate the Linux and Windows home directories but it's doable.

The idea is that the curious people will hopefully start using Linux and you won't need to drive MSFT off campus because the users will do it for you.

Currently it's not possible to send information ftl (faster than light), but what if there are other technologies that can send information by sending a signal through warped space?

Recode all the fft routines? That's ok. Anyways, matlab is essentially "free" in a university environment because of the site licenses.

i built a fairly complex gui in labview but had to use the matlab code plugin to do the majority of the number crunching