VaKo

I am planning on building a file server around Windows Server 2008 Storage Server or R2, with 4-6x 1-2TB WD Green edition HDDs. It will be used to store media files, some of which will be HD, and other general files. However, I am wondering about Windows Software RAID, compared to a cheap (£100+/-) (fake)RAID card for RAID5 or RAID10, and would it work ok with an Atom D510 or would a Celeron E3200 be required? I've not looked into software RAID on Windows before, but under Linux I hear it is quite good, and often recommended over cheap RAID cards. I want to stick with Windows for this, but if I was to use *nix I would use ZFS on FreeBSD 8.

This is why you should buy Dell Enterprise class machines, and get a next working day on-site warranty. 10min phone call (once you know both the system and the machine) and you can get a replacement part installed by someone at your house or office the next day. You can get this for 3 years, but battery's are only covered for a year as they will only last 12-18months under mobile use.

I have a Micro ATX Pentium Dual Core E6300, 4GB and a ATX Core 2 Duo E6750 with 8GB. My main machine is a AMD Phenom x6 1055T with 8GM.

Lol, I used to work for Client Logic as a phone monkey on the British Telecom broadband account back in the day. Small world. I was also fired. I would see it differently, but remember this is the UK, and not the US. If your applying directly to the IT staff, then do a cover letter, nothing long just a brief outline of who you are, why you are interested in the job and an executive overview of what you can do. If your applying to HR, they generally don't give a fuck, they have a list of items that need to be on your CV, and if they find them on your CV a copy of this gets sent to the hiring manager who will then decide if they want to call you up. I'm not sure what its like in the US, but pretty much every IT job in the UK is done via recruitment firms, with HR just asking for 20 CV's with skills X, Y and Z on them. With your level of qualifications, and experience, just aim for helpdesk roles in small-mid sized firms, with plenty of desk side support and interaction with end users directly. If you've not done this before, you will learn more about computers in your first 6 months than you thought possible. Get to know the sys-admins, ask questions, learn from them and be helpful when you can. Do it for a year, get yourself on some projects and then you can start using your degree more. I went from being the guy who fixed your laptop, to the guy that designed and built an ESX vSphere cluster in a year doing this.

Firstly, I have never written a cover letter or applied to an IT job in my life, and I don't have any IT qualifications to my name (although I am working on a MCITP Enterprise Admin cert). I now work for a major bluechip IT service company as a consultant. I don't know how much actual experience you have working in IT, but if you have none this will be your biggest problem, especially with the economy in the shitter as it is now. What I did was do a couple of basic helpdesk/service desk jobs, until I landed one where I got on well with the sysadmin and got myself on a couple of projects, then got promoted. If you do lack actual IT work on your CV (in a corp environment, not just fixing mates PC's for weed money) then unless you can find a graduate position your going to have to work your way up to the more interesting jobs (which can be done quickly if you have talent). To get the jobs, I uploaded my CV to many sites like Monster.com and recruiters called me up about jobs. There are no cover letters involved in this approach, as your CV just gets downloaded automatically and usually they don't even read it until you on the call with them. Update it every weekend so it stays at the top of the pile. This was pre-subprime, but I was getting 20-40 calls a week with this approach. I've also been involved in interviewing people for junior sysadmin roles, and the things we like are people who are interested in IT (and ask relevant questions), people who are honest about there abilities, and people who are good with people. If you have an amazing CV, qualifications up the wazoo, and yet come across as a Theo de Raadt type person or have no experience, then we won't be interested. If you have a solid bit of experience, show a desire and ability to learn quickly and come across as personable then we will be more interested. Basically, remember that IT support/network support is basically digital plumbing, on the job training is worth way more than what a classroom can teach you.

From the dd-wrt forum - "The new d-links dir-655 & Co. won't be supported, becose they use Ubicron architecture - AND this is not open sorce, thre are no tools/library fore this crap! " You want to find a broadcom/atheros based router if you want custom linux firmware, or a small, low power x86 or embeded platform for something like PFsense, Monowall, Smoothwall or IPCop.

http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/kabd_eng.html? Worth a read.

Never had a stability issue with DD-WRT myself, it will happily run without being touched for well over a year solid.

This is just basic geopolitics that everyone with even a passing interest in the conflict should know. The subject is inordinately more complex than this discussion allows for.

Nah, this all started in the late 1800's with a man called Theodor Herzl and a desire to found a homeland for the Jews (roundly hated in much of Europe), after Jewish migrants started to settle in waves in Palestine and began to displace the local population the British tried to stop the Jews from settling as it was causing the Arabs to revolt (Ironically in one case they stormed a boat and shot dead 3 Jewish migrants attempting to run a blockade). But after the end of the 2nd world war the British were not powerful enough to fully control Palestine and in light of the Holocaust they handed it over to the UN, who partitioned the area into a Jewish and an Arab section. After a series of wars with its Arab neighbours Israel expanded and began to take a far more hard-line approach with Palestinians.

Its not a religious war, there are Palestinian Christians and Israeli Muslims involved as well as Jews and Arab Muslims. To view it as a religious was is vastly over simplifying the situation. This is a case of apartheid, with Israelis treating Palestinians as less than 2nd class citizens, denying them basic civil rights and pushing them out of land they have lived on for generations. It has just been hijacked by religious fundamentalists, on both sides of the argument. This is largely the work of Iran, which always used to be a regional super power and now is trying to regain this crown, because while it cannot attack Israel directly, it can support Hezbulla and Hamas to attack it indirectly. (Oddly a nuclear Iran would probally stabilize the Middle East). Iran and Saudi Arabia are also in a cold war situation, as America backs the Saudis which threatens Iran, although this war was largely fought in Iraq post-Saddam. As for the violence, on one side you have suicide bombings, kidnappings, terrorist attacks and the firing of unguided munitions at civilian targets, on the other you have targeted bombings/missile attacks, large scale imprisonment, collective punishment, destruction of property and seizing of assets/deportation. Hamas are making money out of the Gaza blockade, and continue there futile attacks on Israel because it gives them power and for them doing something is better than doing nothing. This gives the right wing of the Israeli government all the ammunition it wants to be as heavy handed as it likes, and the support of the American government. What the situation really needs is for an Palestinian Ghandi figure to rise up and to embrace non-violence, which would make it far harder for the Americans to back Israel's approach and would force negotiations.

Even so, someone needs to step up and be the bigger man in this situation.

Its been tried in the past, nothing much came from it. And TBH, people post stuff where ever they want, so I doubt that tutorials are not being posted because there isn't a specific section for them.

The thing you, and many other people like to skip over is that Islam is not a unified block of religion, ethnicity, nationality, politics and culture. There are Shia, Sunni, Sufi, Ahmaddiya and Wahhabi, to name the major branches of the faith, and they have political power blocks based in counties like Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and Saudi Arabi, each with there own motivations, and each with differing levels of secular society. So to say Islam is responsible for genocide against its own is akin to saying that the church of the Latter Day Saints or the Methodists share responsibility for the Rwandan genocide. Or that because America and Britian are largely Christian countries, the attack on Afganistan and Iraq was a religious war. The situation is a lot more complicated than some trite youtube video attempts to show, mainly because the intended audience is too stupid to actually understand what is going on. As for Israel, the situation is actually more similar to the the South African Apartheid, and has no parallels with the Nazi movement that arose in the later part of the European Civil War (which did kill millions of people, many of which were civilians, many of which had ties to various Christian sects). The Israeli/Palestine conflict will only end in one of 2 ways, the complete extermination of the Palestinian population (something that will happen if the Palestinians continue to embrace violence) or with a unified, 1 state solution in which Palestinians are equal to Israelis (this will require a Ghandi/MLK figure to arise within Gaza).

Doubletwist is free atm, get it.

I have a similar setup, with an xBox 360 and a media center in the front room, and a wireless router hooked into a DSL modem in the hall. So I installed DD-WRT on an old WRT54G I had laying about, and I now have it running in client bridging mode connected via wifi to the router in the hall. Speed is a bit shit, especially when the microwave is on, but otherwise it runs well enough to watch iPlayer or 4od on the TV. Would cost about £20 to implement using wireless G, and would take about 1hr to setup if your not used to DD-WRT. I also used a similar setup at another house, and while LAN -> LAN was piss poor, LAN -> WAN was fine, could max out a 20MBit connection with usenet behind the 2nd router.

Privacy is not dead, people are just stupid. Privacy on Twitter is akin to shouting out your personal thoughts in the middle of a crowded mall, and then complaining that people were listening to you.

China seems to be producing a whole bunch of different Android based MID's and tablets, none of which are actually that good, mainly because they are produced for the Chinese market and not a western market.

For graphics? Meh... but for CUDA/OpenCL this might be interesting.

Why would you even want a smart phone without a data plan? They are useless, kinda like PDAs. The entire point is web access on the train or so forth.

In my office we put on EOD suits, set a smoke grenade off in the HVAC system and punch the fire alarm. Then we charge into the departments office and randomly seize a laptop or 2, throw them into the carpark and cordon the area off. No one installs random shit any more.

I'm on a horse! I have a gun!

Enter the service tag into dells driver support tool.

See, I don't have a problem with people pointing out issues with the lack of integration polices, unskilled non-EU workers, the lack of mandatory English language training for people seeking to live here and over-immigration to certain areas of the country. These are all very pertinent points which do need to be discussed further. However I despise the attitude of disliking immigration because you don't like foreigners, or because you think white Christian people are better than other people. Don't get mislead by the press either, while the UK does have issues with immigration laws needing to be reformed, we are by no means being over run by dirty foreigners. The BNP push this line but its far from the truth. We have far more "indigenous" people who are nothing but a drain on the UK than immigrants. Also, LOL at Australian immigration woes, its not like your country doesn't owe its very existence to immigrants coming in and exterminating the bulk of the indigenous population and forcing the rest to live the same lives as the immigrants.

Yeah, word to the wise. DO NOT BUY OR USE AN IPHONE OR ANDROID HANDSET WITHOUT A DATA PLAN. PAYG is fine for voice and texts, but with most networks the data tariffs are shite.