Slashdot Mirror
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?
lets just nuke it!
--
We are the collective Slashbot HiveMind
Don't forget the guy from UCLA that is predicting a 6.5ish earthquake in southern california within the next few days.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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
Not true, there are hurricanes in Wisconson and Minnesota. Of course by the time they make it even the worst of them are minor storms, less powerful than a normal summer thunderstorm. If it wasn't for the weathermen looking for trivia like hurricanes to try to make things interesting we would never know.
There are worse things than saying something positive about the Vikings, you slip in something positive about the packers for instance.
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
I think it's a fairly safe bet that responsibility can be laid at the feet of something the military calls by the code name "The Sun."
KFG
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...
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.
I have also been through a hurricane (when traveling, in the mid-west).
No, I'm afraid you haven't. A thunderstorm maybe, which can be really nasty in the midwest, but they aren't hurricanes and lack the most destructive part of the hurricane. The ocean.
Live in Florida? Have a nice big cement dome built, with bullet-proof plexiglass windows/skylights.
This works until it gets hit by a ship or the ground underneath it simply ceases to exist. Florida's bedrock is saturated limestone and not to be trusted either. The plexiglass better be cannon proof. There are places where it's vaguely possible to build a "hurricane proof" (for sufficiently low values of "proof") house. Florida's coastal areas aren't one of them.
Live in flood territory? Have your home built on 6 foot-tall columns, anchored in cement. Then, when the area floods, your deck and stairs may be washed away, but your house will remain in good shape.
In my area our trout streams that you can wade across in 30 seconds without getting more than your ankles wet in July wash away major steel highway bridges in March. One good four ton chunk of ice traveling downstream at 60 mph will clean away your house, six foot tall concrete columns and all.
We are small and puny and can be squashed like bugs on a windshield, as can the sturdiest of our structures under the right conditions.
It's best to run away if you have the chance.
KFG
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.
1. Let the insurance companies raise the homeowners premiums to astronomical amounts or flat out deny coverage
2. Deny _any_ federal disaster assistance
to property/homeowners that own/build in high risk areas and don't build/upgrade to withstand a major storm with only minimal damage.
The idea of living on the beach is nice and all, but those who fail to remember that Mother Nature is in charge should get what they deserve. If you want to build your $2,000,000 house on a beach, three feet above sea level in an area known to be overrun by storm surge, go ahead, if you have the money to repair/replace everything you lose time and time again... You can't afford to fix it? Tough luck buster, YOU made the choice.
Why should those who live in safer areas (by choice or necessity) have to subsidize the rebuilding of property in areas that should never have been developed in the first place? For that matter, why should Joe Taxpayer have to subsidize the clueless/greedy?
IANASE, but concrete building California is done all the time, just have to double/triple the amount of rebar used...
-- Mace only makes me hornier.
...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!
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.
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.