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Neither Rain, Nor Snow, Nor Dark of Night...
Digital_Quartz writes "This week's I, Cringely discusses possible plans for ensuring your data survives Hurricane Frances. I've always though remote backups would be the best solution to a problem like this. Maybe even something as simple as hiding a DVD-R under your desk at work, with all your worldly data on it. How do you secure your precious data against earthquakes, hurricanes, and swarms of locusts?" Reader pillageplunder writes "CNN is reporting: 'Scientists say more storms like Frances -- both very intense and very large -- are likely.' They theorize that warming oceans natural cycles are setting the stage. Some interesting facts throughout the article... Forecasting has gotten better, with a 3 day forecast now having a margin of error or 'only' 200 miles." And an anonymous reader writes "For those peer-2-peer geeks stuck in hurricane Frances, you can now listen to Central Florida Indymedia's coverage of the hurricane. In addition to giving updates about the hurricane, they are playing music, interviews, and relaying other radio stations. Possibly more interesting than the content to Slashdot readers will be the fact that it is being done via peer-2-peer. The java program p2p-radio from p2p-radio.sourceforge.net is being used in conjunction with shoutcast to deliver the content. Details on how to connect are available here on Tampa Indymedia's Website."
Keep a nitro sniffn' DeLorean parked in the garage with a terabyte of storage on board, then, with any amount of Warning, 1,2,3 days, hell, one hour, you best hall ass!!!!!!! of course, in the proper direction. If you have other valuable computers you do not want to leave behind, you will need a trailer and a hitch.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
At a gig an account you could store all sorts of stuff there.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
lets just nuke it!
--
We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
So true. I, Cringe when reading I, Cringly.
Don't forget the guy from UCLA that is predicting a 6.5ish earthquake in southern california within the next few days.
Yup...Wisconsin...no hurricanes here, too far north for the fault zone in southern Indiana to reach us, sure it's Tornado Alley but I don't live near a trailer park. I guess the worst that could happen is accidentally saying something positive about the Minnesota Vikings.
Bury it on the moon. If several underground lunar data repositories are set up, then the data will be safe from anything that can happen on Earth. By using multiple repositories, we are protected in case a meteor strikes the moon as well. Maybe the economic impetus that drives future space exploration will be the need to maintain intellectual property in perpetuity rather than mineral resources.
-or-
As Linus suggested, put it on an FTP site and let the world mirror it.
Unknown host pong.
"his week's I, Cringely discusses possible plans for ensuring your data survives Hurricane Frances."
Your harddrives. In a nice, heavy, watertight safe. It's not going anywhere.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Mispelling one word is a grate form of marketing, if it's only one line.
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
Plug it up your butt and give it a swirly.
http://tampaindymedia.org/bin/site/templates/defau lt.asp?area_2=imc/open%20newswire/2004/Aug/41755.7 7734375.dat
u lt.asp?area_2=imc/open%20newswire/2004/Jul/50414.9 6484375.dat
...
Frankovich says the children of survivors of Hurricane Andrew were recently asked to bring in their baby teeth when they fell out, for what was called the "Tooth Fairy Study." It was found that these children had radiation levels seven times higher than what is considered safe.
Frankovich lived directly behind the Metrozoo. While the zoo reported that only a few animals died, in reality 95% of them died in the storm. Rhesus monkeys and big apes wandered around the rubble with Frankovich and her fellow survivors. Only later did she learn that the animals were infected with the AIDS virus. It turns out that the University of Miami ran a research center on the back property of Metrozoo that no one was supposed to know about.
The Coast Guard Station was next door to the complex where Frankovich lived. A woman whose husband worked for the Coast Guard told Frankovich that the Coast Guard pulled 1,500 bodies out of the water. She said that everyone who worked on the body pick-up had to take an oath of secrecy not to discuss what they saw or did in the first ten days. When Frankovich spoke to a group in Clearwater about Hurricane Andrew, a man from the audience stood up and said that he was called up to active duty for nine weeks to help with the clean up. "The death figures the media is giving are totally inaccurate," he said. "The information I received is that 5,280 bodies were disposed of in incinerators."
http://tampaindymedia.org/bin/site/templates/defa
Posted: 7/11/2004 2:00:14 PM
Author: NCA
Bring Down the Israeli Apartheid Wall
Solidarity Fast
Sat. & Sun. July 24 & 25
As the Palestinian Arab people continue the struggle against this and all of Israel's colonial policies, the National Council of Arab Americans (NCA) joins in support of the Hunger Strike currently taking place in Palestine at the initiation of Dr. Azmi Bishara. We salute all participants of this bold act in protest of the Apartheid Wall.
info@arab-american.net
Sie haben recht, Herr Gauleiter.
Whats the chances that this is being caused either intentionally or indirectly from the US governments usage of the HAARP system? http://www.earthpulse.com/haarp/ http://www.viewzone.com/haarp00.html Just curious. HAARP aims to learn how to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes". Communicating with submarines is only one of those purposes.
The snake's head is rising from the ocean. All the energy we've pumped into the ocean/atmosphere over the past 300 years of industry, accelerating the past 100 years in the gathering Greenhouse, is coming howling back down our throats. Undersea ocean currents have gotten twistier, as extra energy has moved them kilometers out of their old tracks. The energy in a 1Km-wide, thousand-Km-long current, twisted twice as loopy through the viscous sea, is enough to send hundreds of force-5 hurricanes, made of fluffy air and nebulous raindrops. By the time the beats in these cycles are noticeable, they're undeniable. And unstoppable. At least humans have some species experience, from past Ice Ages, in surviving these catastrophic climate changes. But only genetically - the Earth washes irritating civilizations from its surface like an eyelash floating in tears.
--
make install -not war
Make a nice USB keychain drive suppository or two. If something happens to the data there, then your data will be the least of your concerns.
Remember, it isn't that the wind is blowing, it's what the wind is blowing.
Thanks to a JNLP distribution, It took me all of 1 minute to get p2p-radio working. Too bad the station election sucks, but hopefully that'll change if this thing gets a good userbase.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Thank you for proving my point that most, if not all, indymedia supports are insane.
1. Buy spare hard drive
2. Copy your hard drive onto spare
3. Fed-Ex spare to friend in Cleaveland
4. Lather, rinse, repeat.
And those of you with a dozen computers around the house already have a buncha spare hard drives, right?
mail a dvd backup to seattle prior to the storm. address it to a non existant address. it will be returned shortly after the storm.
In my room, Girl::Frances blows me!
Who the hell goes around registering all these .info domains just to redirect them to that goatse-poop-browser-hijack site? Must be the work of teh GNAA.
It's hotter. It's colder. It's wetter. It's drier. Oh. wait. I keep moving.
Why hide your DVD-R backup under the desk? Carry it with you. That way you will always have access to your data, no matter where you are.
Also, if something happens that is severe enough to destroy the disk, it will probably also kill you, so you won't be needing that data backup anymore.
Ideology is for ideots.
I set my father and my sister up with linux boxes to act as web server, mail server and storage.
Now, I send 20G to my sister's system (arizona), my sister sends up to my father's system (stuart fl), and my father's system will be sending it to me (Colorad) (Unfortunately, it was not a high priority, but it will be that way once he gets home and cleans up).
Simply trade space with friends.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Did you ever stop to consider that while indymedia might well be insane, and that bizzare reply to you might be insane(or only mocking you, one of the two), that you look really insane posting this the way you are on this thread?
It looks like Jacksonville Beach is going to be spared the worst of this storm, but as usual, you really don't know where the storm is going to land until the last minute.
If the storm turns towards us at a bad time a lot of people are going to be heading to shelters. I'm heading to our hosting facility. Diesel backup power, redundant Internet connections, built like a bunker, away from the ocean.
My servers are in the safest place I can think to go.
1. Make a rar archive of your data, complete with password encryption and recovery data
2. Rename it to something like "Star Wars Trilogy DVD Complete Rip.avi"
3. Share it on P2P network!
Seriously, though, there is a need to develop good backup software, and businesses need to make sure they're prepared for disasters. Here in California we had the 89 and 94 quakes to remind us, though too much of NYC's business didn't get serious about it until after 9/11.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
hey uhh i have ten gmail invites up at http://www.madskillz.cc get them while you can
I don't have time for this, I just tied branches down that haven't yet been picked up from charley.
Answer 1: Maybe i'll just put a stack of DVD-Rs on my roof. I'm sure I'd break some sort of bandwidth record.
Answer 2: Bonnie, Charley, Frances,... $@*%
Answer 3: I'll tell you what, if someone buys me a generator, I'll run a node. Until then I'm sticking to batteries and FM.
In 1938, before NOAA and the National Weather Service, before satellites and the Weather Channel, a Category 3 hurricane hit Long Island and New England. A junior forecaster at the U.S. Weather Bureau had predicted its track, but he was overruled by the senior staff.
Hurricanes tend to lose energy over land, but a few days of stormy weather had created a warm, wet carpet beneath its path. Long Island was temporarily cut in half (and a new inlet -- Shinnecock -- was created and exists to this day). Wind speeds exceeded 120 MPH. Fifty foot waves hit Gloucester, MA. The Connecticut River rose 35 feet above its banks. Falmouth, MA (on Cape Cod) was under 8 feet of water. According to historian William Manchester, people in Vermont, 300 miles inland, could smell the ocean.
When it was over, 700 people were dead, 63,000 homeless. Nine thousand buildings were destroyed, along with over 3,000 boats. Wreckage from this hurricane could be seen well into the 1970s. The cost of the damage was $6.2 million in 1938 (Depression) dollars, adjusted to over $15,000,000,000 today.
Two billion trees were blown to the ground. And this was "just" a Cat 3.
So, yeah, the OP bitches about 200 miles give-or-take. Hell, we can see these forming off the coast of West Africa now. When was the last hurricane that killed 700 people here in the US? (Yes, I know about cyclones killing thousands in Bangladesh, and evacuating everyone is nigh unto impossible.)
There's always going to be property damage. But property can be rebuilt. Even a +- 400 mile forecast saves hundreds, even thousands of lives.
Oh, and about that data thing? Just ftp your stuff somewhere and let everyone else mirror it. Worked for Linus, right?
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
Whenever someone resorts to expletives you know that there are no facts left to debunk and that they are grasping at straws to win the argument.
It doesn't take a hurricane to teach website operators about backup problems, though. Worms that infect and destroy hosting service servers, or router attacks that effectively shut a hosting service down for days produce the same kind of collection of panicked webmasters.
Just backing up website data files is only a part of a website backup plan. You really want at least two independent (that means both geographically independent, and not run by the same company -- don't forget the "FBI shuts down hosting company" scenario) DNS servers listed as authoritative for your domain. Very few websites meet even that lone requirement.
You don't have good data backup if you can't demonstrate that you can recover from disaster, and the same is pretty much true for website backup. If you can't show that you can, within at least a matter of hours, have your website running on a machine it's never lived on before and serving "real" requests from the outside world, then you shouldn't really bother reading the fine print about whether your hosting company claims it offers 99.9% uptime or 99.99% uptime.
I happen to be visiting DisneyWorld right now from Winnipeg, Canada. I would recommend using DisneyWorld as a location for your data centre. They have their own back up generators, and no above ground power lines. That said their pursuit of endless copyright term extensions is totally lame.
If you are in business you should be using something like DataSafe, who will take your backup tapes and put them in very safe keeping should you need them.
Great, until you trip over something on the floor in the dark at the shelter because the power's out, trip, and fall flat on your face, with the disk in your jacket pocket.
DVD-R's and CD-Rs are remarkably fragile.
Please help metamoderate.
to 28 years of hurricane forecasting, I can say it most certainly has not gotten better, at least not for many years. I could do a better job throwing chicken bones and reading the stars. The weather forecasters here are rarely right, and when they are, it can be atributed to chance.
Unless they meant better at fear mongering, in that case they're top-notch.
We're about to enter the peak of the hurricane season. Any day now,
you're going to turn on the TV and see a weather person pointing to some
radar blob out in the Atlantic Ocean and making two basic meteorological
points.
(1) There is no need to panic.
(2) We could all be killed.
Yes, hurricane season is an exciting time to be in Florida. If you're
new to the area, you're probably wondering what you need to do to prepare
for the possibility that we'll get hit by "the big one." Based on our
insurance industry experiences, we recommend that you follow this simple
three-step hurricane preparedness plan:
STEP 1: Buy enough food and bottled water to last your family for at
least three days.
STEP 2: Put these supplies into your car.
STEP 3: Drive to Nebraska and remain there until Halloween.
Unfortunately, statistics show that most people will not follow this
sensible plan. Most people will foolishly stay here in Florida.
We'll start with one of the most important hurricane preparedness items:
HOMEOWNERS' INSURANCE: If you own a home, you must have hurricane
insurance. Fortunately, this insurance is cheap and easy to get, as long as
your home meets two basic requirements:
(1) It is reasonably well-built, and
(2) It is located in Wisconsin
Unfortunately, if your home is located in Florida, or any other area
that might actually be hit by a hurricane, most insurance companies would
prefer not to sell you hurricane insurance, because then they might be
required to pay YOU money, and that is certainly not why they got into the
insurance business in the first place. So you'll have to scrounge around for
an insurance company, which will charge you an annual premium roughly equal
to the replacement value of your house. At any moment, this company can drop
you like used dental floss.
SHUTTERS: Your house should have hurricane shutters on all the windows,
all the doors, There are several types of shutters, with advantages and
disadvantages:
Plywood shutters: The advantage is that, because you make them yourself,
they're cheap.
Sheet-metal shutters: The advantage is that these work well, once you
get them all up. The disadvantage is that once you get them all up, your
hands will be useless bleeding stumps, and it will be December.
Roll-down shutters: The advantages are that they're very easy to use,
and will definitely protect your house. The disadvantage is that you will
have to sell your house to pay for them.
Hurricane-proof windows: These are the newest wrinkle in hurricane
protection: They look like ordinary windows, but they can withstand
hurricane winds! You can be sure of this, because the salesman says so. He
lives in Nebraska.
Hurricane Proofing your property: As the hurricane approaches, check
your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio
furniture, visiting relatives, etc... You should, as a precaution, throw
these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you
should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn
these objects into deadly missiles.
EVACUATION ROUTE:
If you live in a low-lying area, you should have an evacuation route
planned out. (To determine whether you live in a low-lying area, look at
your driver's license; if it says "Florida," you live in a low-lying area.)
The purpose of having an evacuation route is to avoid being trapped in your
home when a major storm hits. Instead, you will be trapped in a gigantic
traffic jam several miles from your home, along with two hundred thousand
other evacuees. So, as a bonus, you will not be lonely.
HURRICANE SUPPLIES:
If you don't evacuate, you will need a mess of supplies. Do not buy them
now! Florida tradition requires that you wait unti
I've been working with CDs and DVDs a lot lately. (My day job is writing backup software) A large portion of the media I have fails within just a few months. Not everything, but just one unreadable sector is enough to cause problems.
Therefore I have to reccomend that you make several backups of everything important. Note however that important doesn't mean everything. You can download linux from anywhere, save the pictures. (though family and friends can get you copies of many of them too) IF you have any open source software, just post the patch, with a note that it isn't complete but just in case you die in the hurricane.
Florida gets hurricanes of some sort every year, a bad one once a decade.
Buffalo NY is assured of getting at least one month of hellish winter. California is assured of getting one month of cloudy weather.
You have floods. We have fires. Except after a fire we have some assurance another fire won't come through that particular area for some time.
All in all the risk v reward in California is quite decent.
My credit union, which is in Minneapolis, MN, has its processing center for it's online banking located in Florida. The processing center evacuated and shut down all of its servers. I am with out access to my accounts because they didn't have a backup center somewhere where these acts of god are less likely to happen, like here in MN! Hell it only gets cold here. That good for computers!
I'm mod this +1 Scares the shit out of me.
CNN is reporting: 'Scientists say more storms like Frances -- both very intense and very large -- are likely.
So what CNN is basically saying is that we'll continue to have seasonal storms just like we have for all of human history.
They really needed "scientists" to tell them that?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
its amazing - we need freshwater to live, but we need a vast majority of it to stay frozen or we'll die.
It's wobling now, slowing down, barely a force 2.
Not exepected to hit FLA until late Saturday.
FLA might see a little rain, that's about it. Nothing to worry about, people, it's nothing and it's over.
There are tornados to worry about, etc., but it seems like living in a coastal region is just begging for trouble.
Maybe I should throw a server online somewhere in the basement, here in 'flyover country' for people 'living on the edge' to back their data onto.
Naw, this house has been here since 1900 but it could go any time...
resigned
The best camera is the Miami Beach ultra high resolution panoramic webcam. 8000 x 2320 pixels.
thinking of keeping data intact, do you think it's possible to store data in the internet.
if you had enough hosts constantly passing packets between each other it should be theoretically possible to store some information exclusively within the packets during the routing transfer.
Meaning, as soon as the data was passed to a router the node running the host sofware could free the memory space it previously occupied.
imagine RAIS (Redundant Array of Independant Systems). A p2p network on which you dedicate 10mb of disk space.
5mb for your files, and 5mb for encrypted parity files for the other users. (storage amounts here are merely speculation).
If your computer is hit by a comet or a sperm whale falls on it then the documents you saved on this network remain. Just log in with your username and retrieve your documents.
This wouldn't be practical for storage of very large things; say media files.
But it should be well suited for small important files: documents and such.
Now, in this network there would be a good deal of latency while packets are passed between hosts (replication, storage swapping).
During these precious milliseconds these packets carry information. since the data is being routed we can strike it from the host.
There would need to be some serious acknowledgement mechanisms for guaranteeing the integrity of this data as is lives in it's spectre form - and I don't currently see how that would be accomplished.
Nonetheless, it's an intriguing idea.
both the encrypted p2p storage network and the spectred storage.
"its amazing - we need freshwater to live, but we need a vast majority of it to stay frozen or we'll die."
:
I have some news for you, Mister AC
1) you need an apostrophe inserted in "its", above.
2) we are all going to die, no matter what the global climate does.
2) a) the coward dies a thousand deaths, the brave man dies but once.
3) What I think is funny NOW, is the shortsighted and selfish behavior of so many people who call themselves intelligent.
Now THAT is hilarious ( and disgusting ).
4) Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those
who think.
I'm still laughing, and I will be laughing until I die, at the way technology has advanced, but human foresight is still as bad as
it was ten thousand years ago.
And by the way, fresh water is LESS dense than salt water. Fresh water of an equal temperature will "float" above a layer of salt water.
( I got a minor in oceanography in undergrad school, where did you get your knowledge ? Cereal boxes ? )
Once again, I find myself wondering WHY I even bother reading this website...
THAT's what CAUSED this hurricane!!!! Dismantle it at ONCE!!!
Love,
RIAA/MPAA
Maybe even something as simple as hiding a DVD-R under your desk at work, with all your worldly data on it.
Better check your employment agreement before you do that. If you develop code 'on the side' it could be difficult to prove that you didn't do any work on it at work. Maybe the company could claim ownership simply because it was on their premises. Definately could muddy the legal waters - tread carefully.
No, he's a nut. The kind of nut who dressed up and went out sidewalk ranting in NYC last week.
Now, if he'd picked a name like 'Duck Ruby' it would all be in fun. But sometimes it seems like he actually believes the stuff he spews. Which is regrettable.
resigned
no way dude, my bosses credit union is down also. and i'm in vancouver canada!
step 2: apply ASCII armoring to the encryption and put a space after every ten characters.
step 3: post to /.
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Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
You could always email it to your 1Gb google mail account. Or here http://www.iomega.com/istorage/ or here http://www.xdrive.com/ Sure there are some free versions available too, try here http://www.google.com/. Or sign up for a free trial, and hope it's all over in a couple of weeks ;)
Whenever I hear about these hurricanes doing all this damage, I wonder why they don't start building their houses differently down there. What if instead of wooden or brick boxes (not very aerodynamic) they started building concrete domes - something that wouldn't catch the wind nearly as much. I suppose it wouldn't help with flood damage (though they might be able to do something waterproof, I suppose), but it would certainly help minimize the damage from wind. And they shouldn't allow trailers/mobile homes at all in places like Florida, but maybe the idea is that they're so cheap that they're essentially disposable dwellings.
Of course the kind of house you build and the materials you choose would vary from region to region (building out of concrete in California isn't such a good idea).
Actually that's not insane. There have been studies done on baby teeth. Strontium-90 was found in the teeth of those living relalitively close to nuclear power plants. Baby Teeth offer radioactive clues
I don't live in an area that has ever had a serious earthquake, hurricane, tornado or flood. Anything extremely important is uploaded to a directory on my colo'd server about 30 miles away (in case my apartment burns down, I guess).
"Hurricane Proofing your property: As the hurricane approaches, check your yard for movable objects like barbecue grills, planters, patio furniture, visiting relatives, etc... You should, as a precaution, throw these items into your swimming pool (if you don't have a swimming pool, you
should have one built immediately). Otherwise, the hurricane winds will turn these objects into deadly missiles."
I'm sorry! The mother in law already is a "deadly missile". What do I do now?
The answer is redundancy. Every day, thousands of cells in your body are screwed up due to interference from background radiation. Your body contains numerous mechanisms to detect cells with screwed up DNA and termminate them.
Your IT technology must do the same. Here's what I use in keeping data safe for a hosted application:
1) The primary server is configured with RAID1 - either hard drive fails, I can pull the bad one and continue working while I replace the primary drive. It has 3 independant redundant network feeds.
2) There's a hot backup server, mirrored nightly that I can switch to in about 4 hours. It's on a diffferent network, in a different city, several hundred miles away from the primary.
3) There's a 3rd backup site containing full backups (incremental backups that emulate full backups a la rsync) going back a full month, at any time. Again, different city, different network.
4) The database is dumped to disk every hour, on the hour. Thus, I not only have a current copy of the databae, but in the event of a programming failure, I can roll the database back to any point on the hour going back 4 days.
5) The application in mind is client-based, with periodic updates to the server. Most of the relevant data could be deleted from the server at any time, and most users wouldn't even notice, since their client applications would update the server with the relevant data periodically!
With this setup, to lose data you must:
1) Not allow the client to "talk" to the server, and
2) the client must suffer a catastrophic failure (EG: HDD failure)
3) The server must have both HDD and all 3 network feeds die, and
4) The hot backup server must be dead, and
5) the 3rd location server/HDD must be dead and
6) the client software must be installed on only one machine (it seldom is!)
Pretty dammn unlikely set of circumstances. If you build your network-capable software right, it is damn near impossible to suffer catastrophic losses.
Does it matter? Hell yeah! I may soon be adding yet *another* layer of redundancy since Postgres replication is now *finally* a real option! But, my business could suffer several catastrophes in a row and we'd *still* continue operating smoothly!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
GmailFS provides a mountable Linux filesystem which uses your Gmail account as its storage medium.
s ystem/gmail-filesystem.html
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-file
"Baby teeth from counties near two nuclear plants in Florida and plants in California, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania were compared with baby teeth from other counties in the same states."
The article I linked said the Hurricane cased a covered up nuclear leak at the plant.
DVD-R's and CD-Rs are remarkably fragile.
They are also cheap. Burn a few - carry one with you, put one under your desk, put on in the car. Heck, put one in the refridgerator if you feel like it. Chances are atleast one will survive.
NEWSFLASH! Scientists say that large rocks from space are likely to crash into the Earth, and erradicate most of the life there.
In reaction to this news, a slashdotter was heard to say, "Humpff!"
Concrete Nail Gun, 4 Nails, 4 Lenghts of Chain, one Personal Safe with an attachment point.
Place 250 Gig hard drive inside, packed in bubble wrap and newspaper one foot thick.
Man, my shit hasn't fit into four gigs since 1998. By which I mean my shit. Not mp3s, or divx, or warez, or operating system CDs or any of the other STUFF that accumulates over the course of seven years of hardcore machine immersion.
Hell, I've generated something like sixteen gigs of data in the last ten weeks. Which is slightly above average, but not by much. As a digital (and video!) artist, I eat hard drives, and backups are something of an annoyance- more for the tedium of the burn or tape time than anything else.
The biggest problem with backups (imo) is keeping them organized and clearly detailed. Mild annoyance to, say, try to find something on a CDR from 1997.
I know how we like to get things right on Slashdot, so here's the actual [unofficial] USPS motto
Actually, given the topic, "gloom" seems a better match, anyway...
rotflmao!
:)
yeah and this guy's posted another anti-indymedia rant today.
he's obviously never been to an indymedia meeting. they're quite interesting grassroots experiments. i've been to many of them. he should stop getting all worked up and take his ass to one
The happy median is critical thinking, which mainstream media coverage does little to encourage.
;)
Indymedia certainly forces that issue doesn't it
Why is is that the supporters of indymedia have to hide to make their points?
well if it isn't the a.c. pot calling the kettle black!
actually i don't have a slashdot account and i don't want one because i don't give a crap about slash-karma. that's why i always post a.c. regardless of the topic.
so NEENER NEENER!
But he can make a fucking wifi signal bounce off of Alpha Centauri and back down thousands of miles away. But how he does it is a secret, sshhhhh!
But I do have to give him some props for his rapping, I love that line in his song with Snoopy that goes:
Pulled up, stop parked, rims still spinning
Valet look like he in the game and must be winning
I remote backup with rsync to a machine that's over 4,000 miles away. I guess that means I should have a reasonable expectation my data will survive :-)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The problem, as I see it, is twofold:
- The occupation. Palestinians are never going to accept Israeli control, and will fight against it until it ends. The Occupied Territories are millstones around Israel's neck, and the sooner they are given back to the Palestinians, the sooner the war will end.
- The culture of vionlence on both sides. Just like Northern Ireland (thank god they've started to move forward!), there is a generation of people - young men especailly - on both sides who only know war, and whose only real skill is in how to fight. They are the extremists, and they see it as in their interest for the conflict to continue.
Is there anything public domain that will do this? I tried Google and found nothing.
Hmmm. Sorry I didn't see that part. It's possible that it could be true. It's bordering on a conspiracy theory, though. One of the down sides of independent media is that there's no real regulation on what's being reported.
...why (damn kitten is chasing my hands as i type!) do you need to hide a DVD-R under your desk? why can't you just carry it around wherever youre going?! I'm lost....
It's not quite what you are asking for, but parity files are great. PAR's have become a mandatory part of USENET binary groups. Plus, the crazy-magic math that is involved in PARs to recreate missing chunks of files can do wonders with damaged media - particularly the newer PAR2 algorithms. I run my little home data backups through it, and I feel pretty comfortable with it.
Somewhere there is webpage and graphics of someone testing PAR2 data recovery by using a felt pen to blot out chunks of a CD, and then recovering it with some sort of ISO maker plus the PAR software. I can't find the link, unfortunately.
the PAR site
I really do this...I do have to check for my data every few weeks and re-download it to make sure it's still safe.
What about ARPNET, from what the Internet spawned from?
The beginnings of the internet go back at least as far as 1957, which marks the founding of the Defence Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in response to the Soviet Union launching Sputnik.
In 1963, ARPA asked the Rand Corporation to ponder how to form a command-and control network capable of surviving attack by atomic bombs.
The Rand Corporation's response (made public in 1964) was that the network would "have no central authority" and would be "designed from the beginning to operate while in tatters".
These two basic concepts became the defining characteristics of what would eventually become the Internet.
The Internet was conceptualized from the beginning as having no central authority, while operating in a condition of assumed unreliability (bombed-out cities, downed telephone lines) or, in other words, having maximum redundancy.
All nodes would be coequal in status, each with authority to originate, relay, and receive messages.
...begins by people who have no idea what they're talking about.
...and so on.
Hurricanes are a natural part of the weather system, folks. The only unnatural thing about the path of Hurricane Frances is the large number of mobile homes, wooden framed building, expensive condos and idiots who refuse to evacuate from all of the above.
The number of Atlantic hurricanes has DECLINED over the last 50 years. Put that in your climate model and smoke it.
And for those fascinated by climate models, here's a kicker from the IPCC 2001:
"In sum, a strategy must recognize what is possible. In climate research and modeling, we should recognize that we are dealing with a coupled non-linear system, and therefore that the prediction of a specific future climate is not possible."
I shall use my patented slashdot idiot model to predict that the next few posters will claim that:
- the majority of scientists believe human induced global warming to be a fact (not true, and since when has science ever been decided by popular vote?)
- that "ScienceThinker" is not a scientist (guess what?)
- that there are "ominous signs" of climate change (when weren't there?)
- that the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is unprecedented (no it isn't)
GO!
W T F, the summary of this news post has massive A.D.D. Screw it, im going to bed.
Larger, roomier, and probably more readily available than a proper heavy floor safe (I think they sell them at Walmart). Plus, you can bolt most of them down, and many come with fire-resistant liners.
Add a waterproof container and lock your safe, and you can probably evacuate with impunity.
Side note: a friend of mine was researching buying just such an item a few years back, and had literature from a bunch of companies. The funniest brochure had a series of pictures of safes involved in various disasters... they were all the same: big pile of ashes/rubble/timbers, with the scorched-but-otherwise-intact safe sticking up out of the rubble.
IIRC, the same phenomenon was noted in Nagasaki after the atomic bomb was dropped... the four Mosler vaults of the Teikoku bank were found still standing in the middle of the ruins, contents intact.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Nothing ever happens here that would endanger your data centers.
Besides I need a new job... please.
This Sig for rent.
We all know they did not build pyramids to put dead bodies in. All the knowledge of the past is hidden in monuments. They've gone through more years and more floodings than most 'scientist' tell you.
I am systems admin for a medium central florida newspaper. I have spent the last day making an additional offsite backup of everything. Databases, file servers, archives, software, serial numbers, etc. The trusty Carbon Copy Cloner (for OS X) and several firewire drives have made things much easier. The servers are already duplicated to our print facilty 2 miles away, so that will give me three copies. I have a final meeting in two hours. What a giant pain in the ass.
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
that's grants and loans, too. that $40bn figure has no bearing in reality.
overview
details
Don't worry. Locusts eat plants, not data.
With the storm about to pummel the Bahamas, I'd say if you're in Florida it's past time to be doing your backups. By now if you & your data are/were in any danger, the backup media should be in the car and you should be getting the F outta Dodge.
Which is definitely going to get hot with some hurricane-force winds, although the current predicted track is about 35 mi south.
This is the main file server at work, which includes a lot of software development.
One set of backups are off-site. Another set (and all the historicals) are in the on-site safe. But the server is currently up. We were going to power it down and trust RAID to keep the data safe, but when it dropped a category, we decided to just see if it'll kep running. It's on a hell of a UPS.
All non-essential equipment is off and unplugged.
Right now, the big worry is flooding. It's big and extremely slow-moving, so it'll dump for a very long time on the land it's passing. Everything's at least a foot off the floor, so here's hoping it doesn't get much worse than that.
It's going to be a boring wait. It's started already (Saturday morning), and it'll be well into Sunday before it's passed. Here's hoping my net access stays up!
I was going to pack my PC in the trunk and take it with me (full tower packed with hard drives) but changed my mind.
I backed up all my critical personal data to DVD and took it with me to our data center near Ft. Lauderdale, Florida where I spent the night on an air mattress in an empty office.
The data center is rated to take a high category 3 strike on the outside of the building (140 mph reinforced glass windows) and up to a category 5 strike on the reinforced concrete data center core. We also have 2 X 1500kw generators and enough fuel to last over a week.
I was actually looking out the window a few minutes ago and you would hardly think there was a hurricane coming. It looked a bit wet but only a light breeze.
We have about 40 people here (the disaster recovery team and their families) and a lot of them brought their pets as well (I can hear a dog barking from an office down the hall).
I should have a great view of the hurricane as it comes through due to the large reinforced glass windows (wish I had brought a video camera) and am not as concerned now that it has been downgraded to a category 2.
The only thing that would suck is if my home floods as I have a LOT of computer and home theater equipment on or near the floor. I have shutters up to protect the windows but there is nothing I can do to stop flooding.
Well I am just rambling on now. There is nothing else to do except wait at this point and at the speed Francis is moving I could easily be in here for another 24 to 36 hours.
At the print shop where I work in South Florida, our customer order database files totalled 190 MegaBytes zipped. We have no offsite backup unfourtanetly. My solution was to fire up Apache on a workstation and email my little brother in New York the link. I figured his Hard Drive's should be pretty safe from this crap. With his DSL and our full T1, it took 30 minutes,
:)
The 100 GB of customer files will just have to survive these pathetic feeder bands.
BTW: Like I was telling him, it could be worse...it could be snowing--that would really suck.
I used to work in the copy room of a law firm almost ten years ago. The bookkeepers made daily backups of all the records on tape. At the end of the day, one tape was locked up in a fireproof safe. The other went in the bookkeeper's purse and went home with her.
The bosses there must have REALLY trusted her.
They also didn't upgrade their systems until about two or three years ago, and their employees just got e-mail addresses two years ago. Progress marches on...
Okay, I know it's not really a practical suggestion, but hear me out. If someone offered you a place to live on a volcano that was definitely going to erupt and destroy your home within the next ten years, would you buy the deeds? Or would you buy a house that was guaranteed to flood out every year? Well, yes, people do, and I really don't know why.
I'm reading Slashdot instead right from not-so-sunny South Florida. With my worldly data backed up on several servers and burned to CD/DVD just to be sure.... You insensitive clods. Oh wait, the Hurricane made some Slashdot news. I guess you guys aren't so insensitive.
Thanks for the link, I'm laughing my ass off at the number of surfers out there in the water. Some baddass waves going on there, mind you if I was there I might be tempted, but I find anything over 3 m a bit scary, not to mention too exhausting paddling out past the rebentation er break zone
Watashi wa chikyubutsurigakusha desu.
After putting up (or helping put up) hurricane shutters on 3 houses, I have nothing better to do than to await the inevitable. And put it on ebay. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=1469&item=5518355878
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=1469&item=5518355985
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=1469&item=5518356022
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=1469&item=5518356055
Are you really this much of an idiot, Halfbaked, or are you
just trolling ?
And if you are a supporter of Bush, I truly hope you don't have children - there are enough idiots in the world already.
Take a DVD-R, place all that you want onto it to be backed up. Next, get a thick plastic, waterproof container that is just large enough for the DVD, and place the DVD-R inside it. Go out into your backyard, and dig 3 feet down into the dirt, and bury it. I gurentee, this puppy will survive *ANYTHING* nature can throw at it.
Our house is a two story one built of concrete and reinforced concrete. The footing go down into solid rock and the walls have reinforced concrete columns ever 10 ft with all corners of the house being poured concrete too. The second floor is 8" spandeck slabs with reinforced concrete poured to a minimum of 4" on top of that. Spandeck slabs are normally hollow but due to the contractor working the concrete rather hard, it filled the voids and made it 12" of solid concrete. Only weakness is the roof but it went thru Andrew with only a few spots where it got down to the tar paper. If it was to be built again, it would have a concrete roof too. New one being built about 2 blocks from us is all poured concrete. Storm panels and sliding shutters on windows and main door. Garage doors are reinforced with either steel beams or 2X4's on edge. One of them is still from when the house was built in 1979.
House was dead center of the eye.
Is a big fan. Stick with me here. We'll build a gigantic fan, black out the entire country for a few hours, and blow the hurricane over to Africa.
Hey, I wonder if a hydrogen bomb would work better than a nuke? In any case, we could use the fan to blow the radioactive waste away too.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this" in a post is the best way to get it modded up.
At 1333, the cops have the beaches cleared, and there's just one emergency vehicle. A few good waves, but not much happening.
Miami looks OK; the storm is hitting further north.
NASA KSC appears to be offline.
CG image from space
False color shot
Another CG from space
I'd hate to be in Florida right now.
SAILING MISHAP
I mean, the latency for dumping a few gigs of pr0n or restoring a backup from an asteroid full of storage is gonna suck, but hell- you don't have to worry about weather. You don't have to worry about atmospheric contamination. This shit's still going to BE THERE in a few thousand years, in some capacity.
:|
We'll see satellites tailored to do this first, though.
Considering the storm is targeting Palm Beach, let's be sure those touch-screen voting machines are safe. First, gather them all up and load them into mobile homes. The put all the mobile homes in a nice open area, say on the beach of a barrier island. Don't close the doors and windows, you need to let the wind pressure equalize and give the storm surge water a place to drain out. And just to be sure, put all the software sources and design documents int he same safe place. Hurry, there's not much time before the eye wall arrives!
Look at some polling numbers, dude.
There are people all over the place, having children and supporting the relection of Dubya.
Not sure what about my participation in this discussion makes me an 'idiot' though.
Duck Rubby is the one who is forever parroting out the propaganda somebody fed him.
resigned
better approach is to build a giant plexiglass shield off the coast.
Not a bad idea. Perhaps we could convince Tom Ridge that it would make the US more safe against terrorism, and DHS would fund it. When they're at it, they would continue to build it all around the US borders. It would not only keep terrorist out, but the cold winds from the Canada during winter time! Talk about a win-win situation!
Just create a 3D 'barcode' on aluminum foil of your data.
http://www.adams1.com/pub/russadam/stack.html
This is a sample of some 2D codes and one pointer to a 'bumpy' barcode. I'm pretty sure a dot matrix printer will do just fine on aluminum foil with a sheet feeder and some fuss.
Since some barcodes will do very high density per square inch an 8.5x11.5 sheet can store a meg or more depending on barcode and the resolution of the reader.
If anyone would happen to know of a printer/reader combination for aluminum foil I'd be interested if it gets to the 100 megabyte per sheet range or better.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Hurricanes come in 40 year cycles. We are part way into the up swing of the high part of the cycle.
in other news.. real estate prices drop in Florida.
harharhar
...with 7 hard drives in a cardboard box wrapped in plastic. Greetings from Savannah!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Not a supporter of indymedia, but I have to point out that who someone is does not discredit or validate what they say. In that regard, if a point is made anonymously, it is made, regardless of whether you know the identity or not.
That being said, that was some nutty stuff reported.
LOCKSS That is, Lots Of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe may be a solution.
See the project ath lockss.stanford.edu