Cringely's P2P Backup Idea

gewg_ writes "If Napster and Bit Torrent had a baby, would it Baxter? As a follow-on to Cringely's last column where he talked about having a backup strategy in the wake of Hurricane Frances, this week he proposes a distributed RAID notion as a solution."

Comments

The more I read cringely...

[GuyFawkes]

...the more I am struck by how stupid he is.

Backing up data is easy and cheap, as cheap as anti-virus measures for windows boxen... the fact is people cannot get either to work because they are LAZY and STUPID and most of all DETERMINED TO STAY THAT WAY.

There is an old saying about fools and their money being soon parted, I think there is also a modern corollary, "Fools and their data are soon parted."

With my work hat on, when asked to help a user with PC problems, I have long evolved a simple tactic, I ask one question.

"Is the data on this computer very important?"

the answer is usually "Oh yes!"

to which I reply "Good!"

(this usually puzzles the user in question)

I then proceed with a full format and virgin reinstall, this being usually the quickest way to fix a windows pc full of cruft, never defragmented, with a corrupt registry full of badly uninstalled software and magazine cover disk trialware, and of course littered with spyware malware and viruses...

Some time later when the user realises ALL their data has gone forever and queries it, I remind them that they were asked if their data was very important, and they answered affirmatively, and therefore they obviously had complete backups of this important data so I was free to fix the problem rapidly.....

I never have the same problem twice...