GigaOM is asking this question: Now if you could get 24 megabits per second for $50 a month, what would you do with it?

Games? I don't do that.

Youtube? I don't religiously tune in.

Skype/VoIP? maybe, assuming I got my number (plus maybe an extra number in Hong Kong) for free... and yeah I am cheap and don't want to pay for SkypeIn/Out or Vonage. I always think it should be included as part of the plan as analog/voice coverage onto digital/data..... But more importantly, I am a geek and like to setup my own SIP gateway for the service so I can learn how it works.

p2p like bittorrent/donkey? I do a bit of it right now, mostly for downloading Fedora via bittorrent. I will use it more if p2p TV/movie/music/etc getting legit, with a price tag around $15/month (of course, I won't complain if it's free).

I run my own web server at home for all my geeky projects and experiments, so for sure I want much more up-link bandwidth.

I think it would be nice if I have enough up-link bandwidth to do music and TV streaming from my server, so I can watch my home TV/recording or listen to my music collection from anywhere.

Actually, what I really want is Hyperconnectivity. I want to able to connect from wherever I am to the Internet, and to stuff at my home server.

up-link, more up-link bandwidth, please!

I was just searching around on the newgroups to find out the list of computers I used to have, interesting history from 386 and on.
- Cyrix 6x86 P133+ /w G586IPC rev b m/b (sold 1998 Feb)
- Toshiba Salellite Pro 430CDT (sold 2000 Feb)
- IBM ThinkPad 380xd (sold 2001 Apr)
- IBM Thinkpad 390E (sold 2002 Apr)
- Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 (sold 2002 Dec)
- Toshiba Satellite Pro 4200 (sold 2003 Jan)
- Dell 486 DX 33mhz, 12MB RAM, 1.44FDD, 32MB HDD (retired from work, gave away 2003 Aug)
- Cyrix 6x86MX PR200 w/ 2theMax P55-BT m/b (sold 2003 Aug)
- Toshiba Tecra 8100 (sold 2004 Feb)
- AMD64 3000+ w/ MSI RS480IL-M2 m/b, bought in 2005 May, gave to a friend since its Linux hw support suck
- AMD K6-2 (??)
- Compeq laptop (??)

There are two laptops die on me
- Thinkpad i1400, dead power management, fan will not turn on
- Dell Latitude c840 laptop, used throughout 2005, power management problem, kind of still work, gave to my dad

Currently own:
- Thinkpad T30, since 2006
- Thinkpad T60, just bought 2007 Apr
- Compeq TC1000, bought Dec 2006, giving to my brother...
- Duron 950 w/ ECS K7S5A m/b, since 2003 Nov
- AMD64 X2 3800+ w/ Asus A8-V SE, CPU bought in Sep 2006, m/b May 2007
- 80386 40mhz with DFI m/b, from 1993 (??)
- 80486 DX 66mhz with 2theMax m/b, from 1995 (??)

After almost 2 years, I am giving up on having the MSI RS480M2-IL works under Linux. The m/b just so unstable, it crashes under heavy disk load, and other situations.

I replaced it with a Asus A8V-E SE and a cheap EN6200TC graphics card (cost CAN$126). From the spec it's less impressive as it has only 2 SATA, no build-in video, and no Firewire. However, I only use 2 SATA and has no firewire device anyway.

I am running stress test on it right now, so far I am happy about it. One thing I noticed is the syslog is much more quiet now, which used to have a lot of APIC errors.

Now, if all runs well, this setup will be my main server for the next 2-3 years.

The new motherboard is installed, but I am still trying to get the RAID-1 going. So, this server will be slow (since the disk is a backup on USB drive) and unstable (will reboot from time to time)

More details later.

[update]
Finally got the RAID-1 on the new m/b working, need a few steps:
0- remove /home from /etc/fstab
1- delete the old sil RAID meta data using dmraid -r -E
2- do a depmod -a; mkinitrd for the new driver
3- boot into RAID hw utility and create the new via RAID device
4- use e2label to add the new RAID device as /home, re-instate /home to /etc/fstab
5- restore data to /home
[/update]

I finally tried FC7 test4 on the T60, it turns out alright. Major problem is that HAL detects the Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG device as a ethernet card. I reported the problem, hopefully they fixed it before actual release.

Otherwise, I am waiting for FC7 to come out in a few weeks, then I am going to convert all the data there to make it my production machine.

Maybe I will get some more RAM to run VM on it.... but need to find some extra disk space.

I wake up to a lot of chatter on Twitter about Digg this morning, a riot was on the popular social news aggregation site that a string of hex make to top of the site in so many ways and via so many posts. The admin of digg gives up on pulling them off the site at the end.



It's all started when the HD DVD processing key is posted on the site, but admin remove them (as well as some accounts) and citing these posts are risking the site from potential legal action. At that point, users start to saturate the site with so many links to the key in different way; blog posts, riddle, Chinese cookies, song on youtube, and all you can think of. For a period of time, the site is reported fully occupied by the information. After considertation, digg decided not to delete these posts any more.

I still don't understand why some people never learn:
- Any form of DRM has proved a failure and cracked eventually. As long as there is a way to convert the encrypted data to my movie, there is a way to bypass the protection mechanism. We found that since the day when personal computer is born.
- Unless you are in a totalitarian world, any administrative mean of controlling information flow never really work.
- The business model of the old world has changed as we enter a digital information era.

This epicode also show the power of web2.0, particularily the effect of social sharing of information. There are millions of voice on the net and it's powerful when they act as one.

Further reading:
Wikipedia
公民抗命反DVD封鎖熱潮席捲互聯網