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Several years ago, I had a break in. The computer was stolen.

Luckily, I have been using a tape backup, and the robber did not take those. So, I was able to go back one month with everything intact.

In those days, everything I had fit in the 2.5GB tape. I then bought a 10GB tape, and it lasted for a few years. Backups were simply a cron job and an email to tell me that the backup is done and to change the tape. I kept one tape offsite as a precaution.

However, life changed. I got a digital camera and started taking a lot of pictures. Then I got another one with more megapixels and started taking more pictures which are larger in size. All of a sudden, tapes were not enough. The largest Travan tape is 20GB native capacity.

Getting tapes for a home setup is a real chore, specially with the rate the capacity of hard disks is growing. Tapes cannot keep up, specially at price points that home users can afford for both drives and media. Finding the media can be a challenge, let alone finding them at reasonable prices.

To this day, my page on Linux tape backup comes up first on Google, despite moving on from tapes.

Because tapes are no longer enough for the size of data that I have, I now use external disk drives in USB enclosures, two of them to be sure, and a cron job to do daily incremental dumps, and weekly full dumps. See setting up a hard disk USB 2.0 enclosure for backup under Linux and Ubuntu Linux backup of a laptop using a USB enclosure and the dump utility (I use a similar approach for the server).

Although drive enclosures can be theoretically kept offsite, they have to be unmounted, unplugged and are bulkier than tape. So it is inconvenient. Using 2.5" drives may make this more convenient, but their price vs. capacity still makes them more costly.

What are others using for a home setup for tape and offsite backup? DLT? DAT? What?

I wrote about this a while ago:

Did J.K Rowling borrow heavily from JRR Tolkien?

I personally think that the themes and similarities are too many to ignore, but visitor comments are split down the middle.

As many of you know, Oracle bought the two transactional engines that MySQL use, namely, InnoDB (by InnoBase) and BDB (by Sleepycat).

Although the effect on the GPL version of MySQL is negligible, the possible effect on MySQL AB as a company cannot be ignored. Remember that MySQL AB licenses its database to enterprise customers under a non-GPL license, and now Oracle holds the proverbial sword.

First, MySQL bought solidDB, then started developing the Falcon transactional engine in house, which shows promise, but is not mature yet.

So, is this IPO (or the hastening thereof) a response to the above move by Oracle?

I am doing exactly that since mid least year.

Bought two 250GB disks (Cdn$70 each on sale), and two USB enclosures (Cdn$27 each).

Works out of the box with Linux.

A cron job does an incremental dump to BOTH disks once a day. Once a week, a level 0 dump is performed and several versions of that are kept.

Details here:

- Setting up a hard disk USB 2.0 enclosure for backup under Linux.
- Ubuntu Linux backup of a laptop using a USB enclosure and the dump utility

Drawbacks?

1. The silent enclosures have no fans, and are unstable. Probably the disk heats up or the chipset, if they are kept powered all the time.

2. The fan powered ones can be kept up all the time but are really really noisy. Not an issue for the basement server, or computer room, but for an office settings it is unacceptable.

3. Offsite backup can be done, but not with just two disks. Offsite backup is really a good idea, protecting from disasters like theft, flooding, fire, ...etc. Easier to do with tapes and DVDs.

I am doing exactly that since mid least year.

Bought two 250GB disks (Cdn$70 each on sale), and two USB enclosures (Cdn$27 each).

Works out of the box with Linux.

A cron job does an incremental dump to BOTH disks once a day. Once a week, a level 0 dump is performed and several versions of that are kept.

Details here:

- Setting up a hard disk USB 2.0 enclosure for backup under Linux.
- Ubuntu Linux backup of a laptop using a USB enclosure and the dump utility

Drawbacks?

1. The silent enclosures have no fans, and are unstable. Probably the disk heats up or the chipset, if they are kept powered all the time.

2. The fan powered ones can be kept up all the time but are really really noisy. Not an issue for the basement server, or computer room, but for an office settings it is unacceptable.

3. Offsite backup can be done, but not with just two disks. Offsite backup is really a good idea, protecting from disasters like theft, flooding, fire, ...etc. Easier to do with tapes and DVDs.

I bought a Toshiba laptop late November, which came with XP on it, with a free upgrade to Vista (with $25 for shipping).

The disk was immediately resized, and Kubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft was installed on it. Windows XP was never even booted, but kept there "just in case it is needed".

For the free upgrade, I did all the paperwork for it, paid the shipping fee, and have not received it yet. I don't intend to boot it either, but I ordered it "just in case".

So, I am counted as an XP user and a Vista user, while I am neither.

This already happened in some countries that were captive markets.

An example is Egypt. In the early 1990s, everyone pirated Microsoft's products. By the mid 1990s, there was no presence for any other operating system there (Linux was hardly mature, and Mac was expensive because of the hardware).

Then the "Intellectual Property Police" was sent after businesses to check licenses, and fine people not having legal copies of Microsoft Windows, Office, Oracle and Autocad.

The results are huge amounts of money for Microsoft and the local businessman who was the Microsoft monopoly (with whatever connections with the government they have), specially when Bill Gates visits Egypt, he is a guest of the president himself.

For consumers (home PC use), pirating is still the norm, and I don't know what they do about WGA. For business, this is no longer an option.

Happy side effect: Some small businesses converted to Linux, although they are very few.

Read more about the details on an article I wrote on Arabic on the Internet: Microsoft and Arabization.

A few months ago, I bought an HP laptop, nice machine, with AMD X2 Turion dual core. However, there was a problem with the Broadcom wireless card. I got IRQ conflicts between the wireless and touchpad mouse. Took it back to the store and got a refund.

Ended up with a Toshiba laptop that has Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG. Works well. Pity, because I like AMD's CPUs.

Moreover, several of the suspects have been freed on bail, one youth had the charges stayed, and some had the charges reduced to "training with a terrorist group".

Two informants (both Canadian Muslims) were in on this, including one who made national TV. One of them (the anonymous one probably had money as a motive to be a snitch.

More links to news articles at Canada May 2006 terrorism arrests.

In some countries they can, regardless of what the EULA or the law says.

Not because it is the normal course of events, but rather because corrupt officials high up in the hierarchy are on the take, and can influence police work.

Example, see the "Artistic Classification police" and how Microsoft influences them in an article I wrote a while back. This practice goes back to the mid to late 1990s.

If you are a small time software developer, artist or author, you don't have the clout to have the strings pulled for the police to act.

South Korea is one country that shares a language with only one other country (North Korea).

The matter is worse in other parts of the world where many more were affected.

A while ago, I wrote about Microsoft and Arabization and the issue of browser independence.

Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.

In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.

Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.

Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.

Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.

Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.

South Korea is one country that shares a language with only one other country (North Korea).

The matter is worse in other parts of the world where many more were affected.

A while ago, I wrote about Microsoft and Arabization and the issue of browser independence.

Remember that there are about 300 million native Arabic speakers, and it is the 5th language or so worldwide, spread over 20+ countries. Not to mention the many others who read or speak Arabic as a second language.

In the mid to late 1990s, Microsoft entrenched itself in the Arabic internet market. Most sites were just unusable form anything other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Since MS IE does not adhere to standards, and it became the dominant browser by the early 2000s, this monopoly further entrenched Microsoft as the sole technology provider for web sites in the Middle East.

Speaking to a developer at a fairly large company about it, he said : "forget Mac and Linux, we say the application requires Microsoft IE 5 [at the time]". I was flabbergasted by that attitude.

Not only is he mandating a certain browser, but an entire operating system and hardware architecture! And that went unchallenged.

Fortunately, things started to improve over the last year or two, with FireFox gaining ground, and there is no single government forcing a monoculture via banking security or something like that. Sites that used not to work (including Al Jazeera Arabic web site) are usable once more, perhaps with a few glitches here and there.

Still, most people use Hotmail for their email, and MSN for chat (voice and text). It may take time, but I hope the spread of FireFox, Mac OS/X and to a lesser extent Linux will continue to keep web site developers cross platform, and never force the monoculture that was prevalent up until a few years ago.

The real reasons here is not to have a hedge against Iran.

It is actually emulating Iran's nuclear ambitions for two purposes:

- Gain support locally among the populace

Almost all the Middle East regimes are hated by their citizens, being despotic, dictatorial, and unelected (at least not in the proper sense). By acting tough, they shed the image of being weaklings by emulating the strong men of the past (e.g. Gamal Abdel Nasser, and more recently Saddam). By having a "national rallying point" around nuclear technology, they divert from political repression, economic failure and all the other internal problems.

- Prevent potential USA attacks

They have the belief that owning nuclear technology will prevent the USA from attacking them (seeing that the USA did not attack North Korea or Iran, but attacked Iraq and Afghanistan). Whether this is true or not, it is seen that way by many ...

- Raise the issue of Double standards

By raising the issue of why Israel is allowed to gain nukes while the other cannot. This is a valid point to raise, although just going about making nukes is not the best way to raise it.

Iran here acts as a catalyst for this, by the others trying to emulate them, not as much for being feared to be a nuclear threat in the region.

See more here, with some more links.

Sometime back I wrote about Digital archeology, and how there are inherent perils with going digital. Case in point: The BBC Doomsday laser disc was not readable only 2 decades after it was made. One one someone rebuilt a BBC computer it was resuscitated. The same goes for early UNIX tapes by Ritchie which were unreadable until someone across the country revived a drive that can read it.

More examples and concerns in what I wrote.

David Farber explains that from a chemistry point of view, it is almost impossible. He also lists some solid stuff that can be used. I list where this progression will lead ...

More on liquid explosives on an airplane.

David Farber explains that from a chemistry point of view, it is almost impossible. He also lists some solid stuff that can be used. I list where this progression will lead ...

More on liquid explosives on an airplane.

I have had a stream of mistaken identity emails on my web site. They range from mistaking my site for the Library of Alexandria, to Sears Kenmore Water softeners and heaters, to an English school admissions department, to a hotel in Cairo, and more ...

America's largest supplier of oil is ...

wait for it ...

Canada.

And the won't believe you unless you provide a link

Only 4% even know it.

Countries constantly arrest people on terrorism charges.

Details and links are on my web site, since people are asking me about it.

A few years ago, there was an ad on TV here (Ontario, Canada) that featured what is says to be Hippopotamus domesticus, the House Hippo. It lives in homes across North America, in people's houses.

The ad shows a very small hippopotamus (3-4 inches long) in various scenes in a normal house.

The following claims are made in the ad, in a voice that looks like Attenbourough on BBC nature programs:

- house hippos are friendly, but will defend their territory if necessary
- house hippos live in bedroom closets, where they make nests
- house hippos sleep 16 hours a day
- house hippos come out at night when they search for food
- house hippos like to eat chips, raisins, and crumbs

The ad then says something like : "Do not believe everything you see on TV. Ask questions".

Read the Wikipedia article, or see the UK version of it here

--
2bits :: Drupal development, consulting and customization.
The Baheyeldin Dynasty.

I disagree.

There are two cases where details of individual lives are very valuable historically:

1. Family genealogy.

It is valuable to know something about your distant ancestors. The lack of data that surrounds your ancestors (say in 1800s) leaves much to be desired. If you know which school they went to, who their friends are, what they did for a living, something about their temper, interests, ...etc, that would shed some light on them. Chances are most people only know names, date of birth/marriage/death, a picture and that is about it.

Consider 50 or 100 or 200 years from now. Say your descendants search The-All-Encompassing-Knowledge-Repository (privacy issues aside), and find out that posted on Slashdot, then they research what Slashdot was, deduce that you are an Open Source fan, ...etc. If they have interest to dig deeper, they can know what songs you listened to, who you chat with, which things you bought.

2. Archeology.

The lives of a single person in some remote past can be a gold mine of information. Think about Otzi the ice man for example. We know what he ate, we know the weapons and implements he carried, and know what he was dressed in. We speculate about the tatooes on his body, and whether he was involved in a skirmish/fight before he died. If we had a recording of the language he used we would know a lot. In any case, he himself is not important, not being a king, conqueror, or author, but the info gleaned from the life of that individual is priceless, and tells a lot about the age.

This is why "Digital Archeology" is so important for the future.

One of the big reasons is where the media puts the spotlight.

For example, here is a list of Muslims and Muslim organizations who condemned terrorism and terrorist acts.

Have you seen any of this on TV or in your newspaper?

Call it media bias or "not newsworthy" or whatever ... the end result is the same: the public always ask for "where are the moderate Muslims" or "do they every condemn terrorism"?

You, and others interested, can read some thoughts on the prophet Muhammad cartoon controversey.

Here is a previous discussion on the topic, as well as an attempt to quantify how many Muslims are involved, and what percentage they are.

The other day, I wrote about Oracle becoming too powerful and that now MySQL AB is totally screwed up.

MySQL AB should have first seen that Inno is crucial to them, and bought them out.

Having failed to do that, BDB was the engine left after Oracle gobbled up Inno, and MySQL AB should have bought them out.

Now MySQL AB will get choked ...

First of all, there was a very small percentage of muslims who reacted violently.

Small percentage? There's thousands of Muslims rioting and attacking embassies. If it were a few small groups of extremists, that'd be one thing. But popularly-supported riots with thousands of people is another thing entirely. It's pretty obvious that the behavior of these violent Muslims is fairly representative of the feelings of the majority.

You can't call them "a few extremists" any more when there's thousands of them crowding the streets.

Second, You are leaving out the political/cultural context. The muslims have been experienced a lot of suffering under colonial occupation.

Tough shit. Honestly, I really don't care any more. The Europeans haven't had control of the middle eastern countries for almost a century now; no one in those violent crowds was alive when there were any colonies. This is like the excuse that some black people in the US give for having atrocious behavior, that their distant ancestors were slaves. Sorry, it's not 1850 any more; it's time to join the rest of society and stop playing the oppression card. Even worse, the US has never had any colonies, so that argument really doesn't apply to the country they all hate the most.

I've been rabidly anti-Republican since the Bush/Gore election, but any sympathy I ever had for Muslims is gone now.

We should pull out of these backwards, hellhole countries and leave them to their own devices.

Where are the "peaceful" muslims?

Um... They're here. And here. And here and here and here and here and here and even here and, oh, there are a few hundred more here.

Muslim leaders around the world have issued fatwa after fatwa condemning terrorism and calling for an end to suicide bombings, car bombings, bus bombs, subway bombs, and every other bombing short of another Uwe Boll film. Just because Bill O'Reilly doesn't tell you about it doesn't mean that is never happened.

I have written two articles on this:

- Tapes are still the most efficient and cost effective form of backup.

- How to backup a Linux home network.

Granted, disk capacity is growing faster than tape capacity can keep up, but RAID cannot be an offsite bacup solution.

Perhaps two disks in a USB portable housing is a better solution. One on site and off site, rotated weekly.

I have written two articles on this:

- Tapes are still the most efficient and cost effective form of backup.

- How to backup a Linux home network.

Granted, disk capacity is growing faster than tape capacity can keep up, but RAID cannot be an offsite bacup solution.

Perhaps two disks in a USB portable housing is a better solution. One on site and off site, rotated weekly.

The scammers have been showing a lot of creativity lately.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share). But I also get ones that have a Christian theme], others with an Islamic tone [baheyeldin.com], and yet another with an Arab tone featuring none other than Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is...

The scammers have been showing a lot of creativity lately.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share). But I also get ones that have a Christian theme], others with an Islamic tone [baheyeldin.com], and yet another with an Arab tone featuring none other than Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is...

The scammers have been showing a lot of creativity lately.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share). But I also get ones that have a Christian theme], others with an Islamic tone [baheyeldin.com], and yet another with an Arab tone featuring none other than Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is...

As much as I despise those scammers, I have to admit that they are creative in a weird source of way.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share).

But I also get ones that have a Christian theme, others with an Islamic tone, and yet another with an Arab tone featuring Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is ...

As much as I despise those scammers, I have to admit that they are creative in a weird source of way.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share).

But I also get ones that have a Christian theme, others with an Islamic tone, and yet another with an Arab tone featuring Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is ...

As much as I despise those scammers, I have to admit that they are creative in a weird source of way.

I get the classic ones (African dictator/official dies and widow/son wants his money transferred for a hefty share).

But I also get ones that have a Christian theme, others with an Islamic tone, and yet another with an Arab tone featuring Yasser Arafat, with links to news articles from ABC News, just after he died.

These guys could use their imagination writing fiction or something. If they had better English that is ...

This is a topic that I thought about a while back, and even wrote an article on.

There are also some success stories with old media.

I hope our data does not meet the fate of Hieroglyphs: undecipherable for two millenia.

This is a topic that I thought about a while back, and even wrote an article on.

There are also some success stories with old media.

I hope our data does not meet the fate of Hieroglyphs: undecipherable for two millenia.

I feel the same, so I wrote: I am not a blogger, this is not a blog.

This is a topic that I wrote a few articles on a while back.

Read Intro to Digital Archeology for an overview.

More here.

This is a topic that I wrote a few articles on a while back.

Read Intro to Digital Archeology for an overview.

More here.

Arabic plays more than passing role in Dune.

Read about how Dune was influenced by Islamic and Arabic themes.

Memory cards are NOT fragile.

For proof, see how digital media preserves photos of last moments of tsunami victims.

Being a Mandrake user for several years, I am happy to see that they overcame their financial difficulties and are in a position to expand.

Apart from the botched 9.2 upgrade debacle, they have a distro that I can use for a Linux home network without spending too much time on it. I have four machines running Linux at home, and don't want to spend a lot of time on each configuring it.

They are also familiar and friendly enough for my kids to use it as their only desktop. They get to play their MP3, use FireFox or Konqueror, use Open Office for homework, ...etc.

Moreover, it is also perfectly good as a server for LAMP, Samba, ...etc.

Go Mandrake!

Being a Mandrake user for several years, I am happy to see that they overcame their financial difficulties and are in a position to expand.

Apart from the botched 9.2 upgrade debacle, they have a distro that I can use for a Linux home network without spending too much time on it. I have four machines running Linux at home, and don't want to spend a lot of time on each configuring it.

They are also familiar and friendly enough for my kids to use it as their only desktop. They get to play their MP3, use FireFox or Konqueror, use Open Office for homework, ...etc.

Moreover, it is also perfectly good as a server for LAMP, Samba, ...etc.

Go Mandrake!

There is another example of Open Source ERP: SQL-Ledger.

It is open source, and uses PostgreSQL as the database, not Oracle.

My brother uses it to run his business for years now.

He contributed the Arabic internationalization part of it. He was interviewed by the Egyptian LUG on that some time back.

I have to question this 'short days' thing.

Where I live (Southern Ontario), the days are starting to get a bit longer. Sunset is around 5:18 or so, as opposed to December where it is 16:45 or so. So I am going home while there is still some natural light, and not total darkness.

Everyone knows that December 21 is the shortest day in the year, don't they (at least most of the world, the Northern Hemisphere).

Also, BBC while being a great news resource, often go into sensationalistic journalism from time to time (don't they all?).

They made a big deal out of Scotland's recent snow, and even put up a picture gallery of it.

When I saw that, I sent it to a co-worker. We get this stuff every week for 4 months every year. A heavy snow storm is when you cannot take the car out of the garage and have to shovel the walkway in order for the garage door to open, and when four family members take a whole day in shifts clearing it!

And we have it easy here! The Maritimes (Eastern seaboard provinces of Canada) are getting pummeled every three days with a heavy storm (by Canadian standards).

I still think that removable media (e.g. tape) is the most effective form of backup.

Under Linux, a tape drive can be used effectively to backup a home network, specially when you have offsite storage (e.g. take the monthly backup to a friend or to your work).

Granted, this is only for 10 or 20 GB worth of data, but I am not even half there yet. This does not apply to guys who have a, let's say extensive, collection of movies, or have a huge set of, ahem, images.

I still think that removable media (e.g. tape) is the most effective form of backup.

Under Linux, a tape drive can be used effectively to backup a home network, specially when you have offsite storage (e.g. take the monthly backup to a friend or to your work).

Granted, this is only for 10 or 20 GB worth of data, but I am not even half there yet. This does not apply to guys who have a, let's say extensive, collection of movies, or have a huge set of, ahem, images.

Did you look at SQL Ledger?

Don't know if it will fit your needs or not, but my brother has been using it successfully to run a small business for a few years.

He was even interviewed by the Egypt LUG about it, as a case study.