>> For the average home user, if your house burns down, you're not going 
>> to give a **** about the holiday photos and the copy of Nero you just 
>> lost - YOU HAVE NOWHERE TO LIVE!! 
> 
> Not true. Well, Nero, maybe, but holiday photos and pictures of people 
> who are now dead and such are irreplacable. You can always get somewhere 
> new to live, or fix the house.

I don't know about you, but if my house burnt down, this would be a 
catastrophy. I would be homeless, and financially destitute. The bank 
isn't going to let you stop paying the morgage just because your house 
burned to the ground. And with no house to sell, it is impossible to buy 
a replacement. I'd basically be homeless for the rest of my life. I 
wouldn't be able to *afford* a computer! Why would I care about some 
holiday photos when I'm going to be spending the rest of my life on the 
streets?

(And then there's the "minor detail" that your backup copies will be in 
your house, and thus destroyed in the process...)

>> This is a very, very dumb way to do backup. A file-level copy will be 
>> drastically faster. (It doesn't involve mirroring all the useless 
>> empty sectors.) 
> 
> Depends how your RAID works. Windows doesn't mirror empty sectors 
> because the RAID understands the file system. Linux and hardware mirrors 
> empty sectors because you can put any file system on top of the RAID.

Well, as I say, it depends on what you're trying to do.

If you're trying to avoid downtime due to hardware faults, RAID is the 
right tool. If you just want to avoid losing a few specific precious 
files, a file-level copy seems more appropriate.

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scott wrote:

>> And - sometimes I don't think people get this - you reach Alpha Proxima
>> and radio back to Earth to say "hey, we got here, what next Houstan?"
>>
>> IT WILL TAKE CENTURIES FOR THE MESSAGE TO REACH EARTH! >_<
> 
> I wonder how much power you need to transmit with to be heard that far
> away?
> 
> I mean isn't the transmitter on Voyager or whatever about to go out of
> range, and that's only just left our own solar system!

I think Voyager uses something like 10 watts or so?
-- 
Stefan Viljoen

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> On the other hand, I wonder how much noise the signal has to be detected 
> over?

10^26 Watts of star

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> I don't know about you, but if my house burnt down, this would be a 
> catastrophy. I would be homeless, and financially destitute. The bank 
> isn't going to let you stop paying the morgage just because your house 
> burned to the ground. And with no house to sell, it is impossible to buy a 
> replacement. I'd basically be homeless for the rest of my life. I wouldn't 
> be able to *afford* a computer! Why would I care about some holiday photos 
> when I'm going to be spending the rest of my life on the streets?

You ever heard of this thing called insurance?  Doesn't the bank demand that 
your house is insured against burning down (and various other stuff) before 
giving you a mortgage?

Besides, AIUI once you are declared bankrupt you can start again afresh, so 
assuming you didn't lose your job just rent somewhere until you can save up 
enough deposit to buy a new house.

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>> On the other hand, I wonder how much noise the signal has to be 
>> detected over?
> 
> 10^26 Watts of star

At which wavelengths?

I saw designs for digital filter that's supposed to recover a 2 mV 
signal burried in a 250 V carrier. (And this was an introductory DSP 
book.) This works because the two signals are at completely different 
frequencies.

If you look at the emission spectrum of the star and pick a wavelength 
where there's little or no emission, it could hypothetically work I guess...

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>> I don't know about you, but if my house burnt down, this would be a 
>> catastrophy. I would be homeless, and financially destitute. The bank 
>> isn't going to let you stop paying the morgage just because your house 
>> burned to the ground. And with no house to sell, it is impossible to 
>> buy a replacement. I'd basically be homeless for the rest of my life. 
>> I wouldn't be able to *afford* a computer! Why would I care about some 
>> holiday photos when I'm going to be spending the rest of my life on 
>> the streets?
> 
> You ever heard of this thing called insurance?

Sure. But I also know that an insurance company's job is to not pay out 
under any circumstances whatsoever. Their entire business model is based 
on preventing customers getting the money they're due. The fact that 
insurance companies are all doing so well indicates that they must have 
got very, very good at this.

> Doesn't the bank demand 
> that your house is insured against burning down (and various other 
> stuff) before giving you a mortgage?

I have no idea.

> Besides, AIUI once you are declared bankrupt you can start again afresh, 
> so assuming you didn't lose your job just rent somewhere until you can 
> save up enough deposit to buy a new house.

I don't know precisely how bankrupcy works, but presumably it means I 
get to lose all my savings, my pension and my car. (Fortunately, in my 
case not having a car isn't going to prevent me getting to work. It 
will, however, prevent my mum getting to work, and she earns multiple 
times my piffling income.)

Either way, exactly how many decades do you estimate it would take to 
save up the astronomical sum required for a deposit?

No matter which way you look at it, a computer is the least of my worries.

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> If you look at the emission spectrum of the star and pick a wavelength 
> where there's little or no emission, it could hypothetically work I 
> guess...

"Little or no" emission from a star is probably many orders of magnitude 
bigger than the biggest ever nuclear bomb on Earth though :-)

http://homepages.wmich.edu/~korista/sun-images/solar_specbb.jpg

It may look on there like there is no emission below 100 nm or whatever, but 
in proportion there is still an almighty amount of x-ray and gamma emission 
from a star.  Standing out above this "noise" is going to be hard.

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clipka wrote:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTK3zeFRLO8&feature=related
> 
> (Thrust vectoring is the key to this, by the way.)

Thrust vectoring owns the sky!  This thing can turn on a dime...Macross 
style!

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Invisible wrote:
> I don't know about you, but if my house burnt down, this would be a 
> catastrophy. 

It's certainly not pleasant, no.

> I would be homeless, and financially destitute. The bank 
> isn't going to let you stop paying the morgage just because your house 
> burned to the ground. 

The bank has no way to force you to pay the mortgage. At least around here. 
They'll just take whatever's left.

But that's what insurance is for.

> And with no house to sell, it is impossible to buy a replacement. 

You need a better job.

> (And then there's the "minor detail" that your backup copies will be in 
> your house, and thus destroyed in the process...)

That's what a fire safe is for. Or a safe-deposit box.

> If you're trying to avoid downtime due to hardware faults, RAID is the 
> right tool. If you just want to avoid losing a few specific precious 
> files, a file-level copy seems more appropriate.

Sure.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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Invisible wrote:
> Sure. But I also know that an insurance company's job is to not pay out 
> under any circumstances whatsoever.

Some are, some aren't. If your house burns entirely to the ground, it would 
be hard to argue that you weren't due all the money the policy was worth.

>> Doesn't the bank demand that your house is insured against burning 
>> down (and various other stuff) before giving you a mortgage?
> 
> I have no idea.

Certainly in this country.

> I don't know precisely how bankrupcy works, but presumably it means I 
> get to lose all my savings, my pension and my car. 

Not in this country.

> Either way, exactly how many decades do you estimate it would take to 
> save up the astronomical sum required for a deposit?

It took me about 3 or 4 years.

> No matter which way you look at it, a computer is the least of my worries.

True. And of course, you don't have any friends, either, who might be able 
to print out pictures for you off your hard drive. ;-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

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