Slashdot Mirror
Google Deletes Artist's Blog and a Decade Of His Work Along With It (fusion.net)
Ethan Chiel, writing for Fusion: Artist Dennis Cooper has a big problem on his hands: Most of his artwork from the past 14 years just disappeared. It's gone because it was kept entirely on his blog, which the experimental author and artist has maintained on the Google-owned platform Blogger since 2002 (Google bought the service in 2003). At the end of June, Cooper says he discovered he could no longer access his Blogger account and that his blog had been taken offline. Along with his blog, Google disabled Cooper's email address, through which most of his correspondence was conducted, he told me via Facebook message. He got no communication from Google about why it decided to kill his email address and blog. Cooper used the blog to post his fiction, research, and visual art, and as Artforum explains, it was also "a platform through which he engaged almost daily with a community of followers and fellow artists." His latest GIF novel (as the term suggests, a novel constructed with animated GIFs) was also mostly saved to the blog.WayBackMachine has some of the pages from his blog, but they are only screenshots. Google Cache is also of not much help. Slashdot readers, just out of curiosity, is there anything -- any service -- Mr. Cooper could use to get his artwork back?
The blog ate my homework.
A rouge Right To Be Forgotten?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
until the lightning bolt comes out of it....
I mean...really? It's 2016. Your art is your passion, and you don't have it backed up ANYWHERE?
It's almost like he used a free service with no expectation of availability or warranty, to do all of his work.
He sounds Millenial.
That's what he gets for not keeping an offline backup.
If you dont have a backup, then it must not have been important to you...
I'm sure they still have it. And find out why it was taken down, may have been a violation of their terms or a copyright complaint.
This should serve as a reminder that backups are important.
you can't rely on it to do anything in particular; you are entirely dependent on the whims of whoever provides you with a free service.
Everyone on slashdot should know that, I tell my friends to backup things from ''the cloud'' to some physical media that they can hold in their hand (preferably 2 copies), but I know that most ignore me ... 'Oh, that is just Alain sounding off again, I will be all right ...'
Or whatever that nag thing is.
On another note, this is the future of "cloud": You no longer own what you do; if your provider deletes it all, poof, it's gone. And the only way to maybe get it back is to go big, go public, shout a lot, raise a ruckus. Not everybody can or wants to do that.
Better keep your own work under your own control and keep backups of that. Then publish from there.
Now the experimental author knows the outcome of the experiment. That artistic work will disappear if you don't take efforts to preserve it.
If we repeat the experiment we would be doing science. (would that make you a scientific author instead of an experimental one?)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"Cooper, who lives in France, told Artforum he’s consulted a French lawyer specializing in intellectual property. He told me he’s considering suing Google"
Blogger TOS:
"OTHER THAN AS EXPRESSLY SET OUT IN THESE TERMS OR ADDITIONAL TERMS, NEITHER GOOGLE NOR ITS SUPPLIERS OR DISTRIBUTORS MAKE ANY SPECIFIC PROMISES ABOUT THE SERVICES. FOR EXAMPLE, WE DON’T MAKE ANY COMMITMENTS ABOUT THE CONTENT WITHIN THE SERVICES, THE SPECIFIC FUNCTIONS OF THE SERVICES, OR THEIR RELIABILITY, AVAILABILITY, OR ABILITY TO MEET YOUR NEEDS. WE PROVIDE THE SERVICES “AS IS”."
Oh would you look at that ...
Remember that "on the cloud" just means "on somebody else's server". They may say you'll never lose it, but they have been known to lie, or go under, or change their service. Remember the Sidekick which advertised all your phone data would be in the cloud and backed up so you'd never risk losing it?
D. Cooper you say? Maybe the FBI commandeered his Google account years ago and shut it down when they closed their investigation into the famed hijacker.
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
He'd need the URL of a publicly accessible page(s). And then only maybe.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
http://archive.is/3tNs
"is there anything -- any service -- Mr. Cooper could use to get his artwork back?"
Yes. Restore from backup in his backup software.
Whoops. You didn't do the thing that EVERYONE talks about every time they lose something, that schoolkids are taught to do, that everyone needs to use at some time in their digital lives?
Shame.
Call it "temporal art", forget it existed and move on. The rest of the world already has. The only people who thought it important didn't think it important enough to save BEFORE it was lost.
You must be new here. To paraphrase Qui-Gon Jinn, "there's always a bigger asshole."
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
A single copy is an accident waiting to happen, whether that copy is on Google, OneDrive, or your 10 y/o laptop.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Maybe someone in the UK filed a right to be forgotten request and Google just got the wrong person. I'd call the NSA and ask them for a restore (since they snoop on everything anyway).
MY EYES! THE GOGGLES, THEY DO NOTHING!
The quote is "My eyes! The googles do nothing!".
Further reading: http://www.urbandictionary.com...
This should not be a surprise to anyone here, but it's a very good example that, unless you have a specific document signed by both parties promising some level of service, you don't have that service.
I'm in the middle of a "cloud conversion" for one of our core applications. I get incredulous looks and blank stares when I ask application developers how they've planned for redundancy and potential data loss. The other day, I actually had a senior application architect tell me "the cloud takes care of that." Sigh...yes, you can be reasonably sure that your data will survive a physical disk failure. But will it survive an accidental deletion? The cloud alone sure doesn't guarantee that. They also don't guarantee that your application will run if one of their data centers blows up...unless you pay for that.
In short, smart infrastructure guys have nothing to worry about in terms of the cloud -- you don't have to worry about hardware failure, but you do need to be smart building out the pieces. The developers are being told that all they need to do is push the button to deploy their applications now, so we still need to protect the system as a whole from stuff like that.
Yeah, I'm being harsh, but I am so fucking tired of people just putting faith in the "cloud."
He deserved it. This is what he gets for using proprietary software and software as a service.
The only cloud I trust is my own. If it had anything important on it, I'd have VMs at more than one hosting provider.
This is also a story about backups, but fuck the "cloud." When you use somebody else's cloud, you have no control over it. Don't whine and bitch when that becomes a problem for you.
My other frustration with the cloud are clients who sign up for SalesForce and then are fucking shocked that they need to pay for me to be able to hook into their API.
Predictably, "experimental art" are trigger words for most of the crowd here. Wannabe programmers have a perfect target in artists against whom to direct their own insecurities regarding social acceptance and worth.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Probably one flash drive could have held the contents of his art and blog. Who doesn't keep the original sources, though? I create games, and the assets I create always have source in the form of Illustrator, Photoshop, Corel PhotoPaint or Corel Draw files - all religiously uploaded to several destinations as backups. House fire? I have cloud backups and off-site discs at another location. Cloud goes offline? I have several backup drives locally.
It's dumb and tempting fate to put all your eggs, as they say, in one basket.
https://support.google.com/blo...
"Quote"Check your email to see if you got a message from support@blogger.com. If your blog was deleted by Google, the email will explain what happened."End Quote"
didn't the author/blog owner of this do any kinda research? why is this story on slashdot really....
Jack of all trades,master of none
It sounds like he had high expectations of availability and warranty.
I'll join the chorus of voices saying it was incredibly stupid to use an online service as your only copy of your materials, with no local backup. But what's done is done. If the Wayback Machine doesn't have a copy, try installing the Resurrect Pages add-on to Firefox. It links to a lot more caching and archiving services than just the Wayback Machine.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/
Wait, WHERE is cloud?!!
shit.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Personally, I am seeing a big business opportunity for the NSA here. As I envision it, anytime, anywhere, just say "NSA, back me up please". A link to the backed up files will then appear on your computer screen, and your credit card or bank account will automatically be deducted.
Quite. People are actually gloating over this guy's loss. His only crime is not to not be as computer savvy, or to put it another way, his only crime is not to be a basement dwelling neckbeard.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The conclusion from all this is that even if you don't backup anything for 14 years trusting it all to a free service with a big fat disclaimer in their TOS you still get some bits and pieces back via the good work done by the archive.org and other similar services.
I'm sure the submitter is surprised that the answer to the impromptu ask slashdot tail on the story got such a wonderful response. But regardless, how did this story warrant posting on Slashdot? Dennis Cooper can go figure out with Google why they removed it. If he finds out it is for some newsworthy reason, go right ahead and have some random article written about it. There is literally nothing of value in this story. It doesn't expose some major concern with Google's services. It doesn't highlight an abuse of government power. It's one guy with some content that he didn't backup and has MAYBE lost for good.
Only way this guy is gonna see his shit again is with a time machine. Sorry bro.
Uncle Al says "Save early, save often".
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
... it's unwise to entrust anything of value to "the cloud". Put your work and your intellectual property on Google - and it may vanish, leaving you with nothing except the dusty prospect of sueing one of the world's biggest and most powerful corporations. Buy books from Amazon in Kindle format, and one day they may simply vanish too - as, with supreme irony, copies of "1984" and "Animal Farm" vanished in 2009. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...
Keep what is important to you under your own eye and your own control, and of course back it up judiciously and perhaps store copies in a few other places. But blithely assuming that your intellectual property is safe on computers owned and controlled by people whom you do not know, and who have fundamentally no obligation to you, is risky.
If you enjoy thrillers and would appreciate a dramatic fictional presentation of these ideas, try Michael Connelly's novel "The Scarecrow". https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scare... You will probably never feel the same about "the cloud" again.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I had been using a blog to record my pond over a period of a year. I specifically wanted to have a timeline record of pictures and notes. I knew no one would be reading it for a while until I completed the year and used it essentially as a notebook that I could easily upload to using my phone. I got about 10 months in and Wordpress deleted it all. Greeeeat. I still have the photos on my phone, but not the notes I took.
And this is why I have about 100TB of hard drives lying around. “accidents” happen. Companies change policy. Three hard drives rotated; and this problem wouldn’t exist. I still want to know: How to backup (retain) my email from Yahoo.
I wish him the best. I would also be interested in knowing why his accounts were deleted.
That's many levels of meta-ironic. The correct quote is "My eyes! The goggles do nothing!" So your source is wrong. But their presumably unintentional misspelling of "goggles" as "googles" makes it fit very well with this story.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
This is just a case of someone that doesn't know how the Internet works, and maybe can't read. It's documented elsewhere that his account was disabled because of a violation of Google's terms, and when that happens, after you try to log into google there's a prominent message saying as much with instructions on how to get more info, etc.
Nothing has been deleted. Nothing is gone. He just needs to take care of whatever violation he triggered with Google.
And, as stated elsewhere by everybody and their mothers, back your stuff up someplace else in the physical world. Hard to believe it took this guy 63 years to learn that lesson.
And fortunately he doesn't have a backup, sparing the rest of humanity from the risk of exposure to animated gifs. Now can we get to work on the kittens?
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
That was the trade-off he didn't know about. In exchange for winning the Euro 2016 Final, he lost his data.
He obviously never read the current TOS which have been in effect for at least two years. He wants to sue after Google's TOS clearly state they assume no responsibility? His own lack of responsibility is the only culprit here. And if by some slim chance he finds he can can sue, the TOS say damages are limited to what he paid for the service (i.e., zero). Please, Slashdot! We aren't this desperate for news! But he does have one thing on his side. Maybe as with the death of an artist and the value of their works going up, so will the value or quality of his works with their disappearance. The fish that got away is always much larger than the one pulled into the boat. He'll forever be able to say how great his work was without any evidence to disprove his statement.
/.'s Psychic-in-Residence: Psychic to the Geeks
After the numerous services that Google has created and subsequently terminated, I don't use anything of theirs unless it's for the most noncritical, temporary, ephemeral, or throwaway purpose. They've screwed me too many times for me to get sucked in again.
If both his blog and his e-mail have stopped working, it sounds to me like his entire account has been shut down. AFAIK, that's only done in cases of pretty egregious abuse... kiddie porn and the like. It's possible he didn't do the abuse, though, so he should contact Google to go through the account recovery process. This seems like a good place to start, then click "Another error or problem".
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Somebody who creates series of animated GIFs and computer-aided artwork, and who also operated a blog for the last 14 years can be called anything BUT not tech-savvy.
I am not "gloating" over his loss, however I think that:
1. It might not be a loss after all (the data is most likely still there somewhere)
2. It's too early to yell "google ate my homework" until Google definitely rules that the data is lost
3. Having one instance of your data only and not thinking about the possible consequences for 14 years is inexcusable.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Do you GOT THAT? FFS.
He probably bragged that he didn't need to do anything to protect it, it was "in the cloud, on Google's servers."I have heard that from to many idiots. This makes me wonder even more about how stupid some small startups are to host their companies email on GMail.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
WayBackMachine has some of the pages from his blog
If you try the Blogspot's localized domains, there is more content saved there
.com
.co.uk
.ca
.com.es
.com.br
...and so on
I have told people in my circles for years that relying on "cloud" backups is an invitation for disaster for a few reasons: 1. It's not your server, even with legal agreements (how enforcible they are can vary from country to country), someone could hit the "rm" script and bye-bye data. Suing (even if it is an option) can't get the data back. 2. If you lose your connectivity to the Internet or the site, or the service provider is out of business, your data is effectively gone temporarily or permanently). 3. Any staff member can view that data. encryption (which can be intentionally weak or have a back door) can be used against you without you even knowing it...(until it's too late to do anything) We are a culture taught to "set and forget" and this artist, like most of us, got caught up on the idea that is data would be kept safe, which is exactly the mindset on that groups like Google, Iron Mountain, DropBox, Microsoft, Apple and many other "cloud providers" intentionally provide.The only way to be sure your data is secure (assuming you don't care who views it as much as making sure it's preserved) is to have your OWN local backup in addition to a cloud drive. You can create your own cloud drives to reduce the number of people likely to have access to the data (remember encryption is NOT a guarantee of security). There are many programs (free and commercial) that can help with your backups. Areca (open source/free/user friendly), Acronis (commercial, user friendly) and other products like Bacula (less user friendly), Bareos (Bacula fork). there are others, list here: http://www.enterprisestoragefo... Most people will be happy with Areca: http://www.areca-backup.org/in... We all have to remember we have to protect our own data and not get "headlight" frozen by everybody repeating "cloud storage" in our ears to the point it overrides our common sense. We have so many tools available to the public to protect ourselves and our data now. All we need to do is turn on our common sense/brains. I feel for this artist, but he should at least be a reminder to all of us of the truth we all know but somehow keep ignoring. Oh, at $150 CAD for 2 TB, we don't really have price as an excuse. Oh, also remember hard drives often die between 3-5 years (enterprise, Western Digital Black, Hitachi Ultrastar) or 1-3 years (Western Digital Black, i.e, green blue, red, purple, Hitachi Deskstar series). I don't mention Seagate because I've had too many bad experiences with them. I assume 1-2 years for their drives based on experience and test of Meantimes between failure, but Seagate drives are the cheapest, so for datacenters they are popular with their RAID 6 and RAID 10 setups.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Well, if Google lost m kids' baby pictures you could say the same thing. The monetary and cultural value of those pictures is zero, but they're still important to me.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
His mistakes were many. J'acusse!
The Top 10:
What a maroon.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Heh, good thing I actually went back and read more of the article before posting the below. Still, waste not, want not, and I still doubt a thorough examination of what archive.org actually preserved had been done. Then there's the matter of whether or not Google merely hid or deleted his work.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/... seems to say that archive.org has in fact been scanning the site, which is the first thing I check every time I discover content gone missing and should have been one of the things that someone at fusion should have done before running the piece. Besides, everyone knows you should back up the things that are important to you. I didn't care to click on any of the links
Have we heard anything from Google about this yet?
uploads it to a free service and then deletes local original files? Maybe we need a Digital Darwin Award site....
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Well, if Google lost m kids' baby pictures you could say the same thing. The monetary and cultural value of those pictures is zero, but they're still important to me.
Important enough to back up?
The artist's "experiment" has made a "discovery". Its important to back up your data regardless of who your online storage "partner" is.
Surely he has local backups?
Nobody would be so fucking totally stupid to have their only copy of all their work on a blog on the interwebs? LOL.
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
They change shape all the time (e.g. 15 GB free storage becomes 5 GB overnight). They drift around depending upon which way the wind is blowing (company gets bought out by other company that has an entirely different mission). They disappear in the hot sun sometimes (bankruptcy, business focus changes, boredom). And in the case of this story...they can rain on your parade (all your data belong to us).
I'd bet just about zero percent on this thread have "backed up" their money - which is bits in some bank's computer - at most. Their "TOS" were recently changed to "bail-in" by lawmakers. Yet you all seem to be perfectly happy with money that's basically fake and which only exists as bits on a computer you don't own. Which can be taken from you -legally- if the bank makes bad bets (yes, they are allowed to co-mingle funds now too). Don't take my word for it, but don't be surprised if more than GIF's go missing at some point.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
...not just an "artiste" but stupid as well?
"the experimental author and artist has maintained on the Google-owned platform Blogger since 2002"
No backups anywhere?
Well, can we conclude finally that "the cloud" isn't as flawless a solution as all those cloud-storage salespeople INSIST it is?
-Styopa
He should try this service called "Backup your blog" Offered by blogger
more info here:
https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/41387?hl=en
There is a similar offering for his email. Is called Thunderbird...
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
He should cut his ear off. That'll show Google he's serious.
Anybody that keeps their life's work on a single free cloud service and also doesn't keep any backups, is in my opinion so stupid that its almost inevitable eventual loss should be considered self-inflicted.
I am constantly amazed by the belief of friends and family who have no technical background that Google (Alphabet) and all things related to Google are the outcome of an altruistic and open minded company intent on making the internet of things a better place.
Especially given Google's propensity to just drop entire products/services at will.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Common crawl seems to have it.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
I'm a gen Xer and I sympathise with the millennials. The boomers screwed everything up, broke the economy, dragged me it if the EU, and have a massive sense of entitlement. If I hear "I've worked hard all my life" one more time I thought it was bad when I had to pay for the education that the boomers got for free. But then I look at the deal the millennials have, and realise they are even worse off.
Hate to break it to you but blame the 'greatest generation' as well. They developed many of the stupid business practices that led to the downfall of U.S. industry. They only seemed to know what they were doing in the 50s/60s because they effectively had no competition, literally blew it all up in the 40s, so many a foolish idea was allowed to persist and become entrenched. They started to push the costs onto future generations, for example the countering a demand for higher wages with increased retirement benefits. That bill won't come due for decades, but it eventually did, and such overhead made U.S. manufacturing less competitive. Combined with the trade policies they passed in Congress they share in the blame for exporting U.S. industrial production.
Let me tell you a story..
An experimental artist did some work, pinned it up to the public noticeboard at the load library.
He notice some people looking at it, so made more, kept pinning it up. Never kept any copies, just pinned the originals up.
The noticeboard had plenty of empty space, and he was enjoying this.
Some people even pinned up notes making comments on his work
After a few years, the noticeboard was taken down, because the library had been been reorganising, and there were now bookshelves there.
The artist stood in front of the library, complaining to everyone who walked past 'they took down my artwork!!! its not fair!!'
Perhaps he should have gone to librarian and asked very nicely if they still had the old noticeboard content, because he had been foolish enough to
not keep any copies, and would really like to actually have kept some of it.
But no, he just kept complaining to random passers by, hoping that would somehow help.
The page I linked isn't my source. My source is watching the show (every single episode thus far) and hating when clowns get it wrong. I've posted about this matter before.
I found it humorous that the page I found said "googles" so I copied it, hoping someone would notice.
Exactly, Google was under no SLA to ensure the datas integrity. It was the artists personal responsibility to backup all of his data. Now it's curious why the person's account was removed and no answer was offered by Google.
My 9th grade algebra teacher gave an example of this: a Greek philosopher (Aristotle?) complaining about the corruption of youth in his day, her point being that this has always gone on and is no big deal. What she missed was the collapse of the Greek empire a generation later.
Laziness and corruption do matter, and empires do fall due to the failings of their citizens.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Slashdot readers, just out of curiosity, is there anything -- any service -- Mr. Cooper could use to get his artwork back?
A time machine and some common sense?
I have been on the other side of this (in a previous job), and have had some insight into what's happening in these situations. Yes, accidents do happen and data occasionally gets lost. That's why you always should keep backups. And unlike other providers, Google does make that relatively easy with its "Takeout" service. Also, if you do contact Google as soon as the problem happens (preferably, within the first month), data will usually be restored. Admittedly, Google doesn't make it easy to contact them. So, that's unfortunately a bit of a challenge.
Now, for the ugly side of things. From my experience, a full 90% of the users who complain loudly and publicly, really only tell half the story. A provider such as Google won't publicly comment, as that's a battle that can't be won. The court of public opinion is merciless that way. But I swear, the vast majority of cases, the complainant is really at fault themselves. They just conveniently omit those details when they go public. "What? I should have mentioned that I ran a child-porn ring from my Google account before it was shut down? Why? Is that relevant? I still deserve all my data! And besides, I should sue for disruption of business. My child-porn business partners don't like their e-mails bouncing!".
Not saying that this is exactly what happened in OP's case. But I'd honestly be surprised, if he told us all there is to his story.
Ask Google what happened.
If I had to guess, someone found his email password and deleted the blog for shits and giggles.
Or he could scream and throw a tantrum before Google have a chance to respond (and probably before he even attempted to contact them)
Lesson #1 of computers:
If you do not own and control the machines that hold your data, then you do not own and control your data.
It's really just that simple, no matter what Amazon or Google or Facebook tell you. It's the lesson people learned in the 1960s and 1970s and that helped drive the 1980s "personal computer" revolution. Businesses were sick of leasing hardware and paying monthly fees for software, support, and storage and then having access to their own data controlled by the providers who kept collecting monthly fees...
"The Cloud" is a MARKETING breakthrough. In technological terms it's totally retrograde. In privacy, security, and personal property terms it's insanely bad and foolish.
"Artist Dennis Cooper has a big problem on his hands: Most of his artwork from the past 14 years just disappeared. It's gone because it was kept entirely on his blog, which the experimental author and artist has maintained on the Google-owned platform Blogger since 2002 "
And that's why YOU SHOULDN'T DO THAT.
At the very least make some fucking backups once in a while, but depending on online services is just a bad idea in the long run.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"Stupid is as stupid does!" Blessed are those who make backups. ---and preferably off-line backups.
I wouldn't be surprised if a DMCA complaint made by a 3rd party (and likely one hired on behalf of him) is behind this.
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
Also this is a good lesson for those using cloud storage, have more than one and mirror all your personal files across both and "with different passwords" . If one cloud provider does lose all your data you have a fall back.
The blog was taken down for repeated violations of the TOS. The Guardian can offer you some insight: If you scroll down a bit, you'll see this:
He had a featured post, twice a month, where he would take ads by escorts and highlight their literary qualities. Cooper’s work often depicts sexuality and violence in graphic terms, and some of the writing and images dealt with similar themes.
He has no reason to whine.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
You're thinking of PayPal.
Of course. But I'm just pointing out that you can't expect people to be OK with their stuff disappearing because it's not important to YOU, which should go without saying but apparently does not for some people.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
me.
If they're important to you then why wouldn't you make a copy?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
He should try the Waybackmachine. Maybe they have a copy of some things.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
When working on your PC you need to back up. Everybody knows that. When working in the Cloud you need to back down. A lot fewer people realize that. It's bad enough that I got stuck with an ugly interface on Flickr after less than 1000 shots. There were some real pros on there with 100k+ shots and I feel sorry for them. There are recovery programs out there. I don't know how well they work, and I don't know how good a job they do at preserving things like tags, comments, EXIF, etc. I've been meaning to get around to putting my pix in a better format; but it's one of those things I keep putting off.
Anyway, people need to consider their backdown plans just as much as they need to consider their backup plans.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
"The page I linked isn't my source. My source is watching the show..."
Oh, you just don't know how to spell goggles. Got it.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Google has been busy converting all of the Old Things on Blogspot to https and that has screwed up a few Blogs for some reason. It must have a physical/numerical address so try that..
You appear to be correct. Web archive has copy. Appears to be a lot of gay porn not owned by blogger.
Doesn't matter. In the court of public opinion, you lose when you stay silent.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
And now he must suffer for his art...
Let's say, all your art was in a studio then the studio burned down so that you lost it all, isn't that the same thing?
Just treat the art as ephemeral. The majority of art is not permanent and no way to make it permanent, and modern art is full of intentionally ephemeral creations (performance art for instance). If the artist was any good then it'll go down in artist mythology/lore like the first draft of Mona Lisa frowning.
But maybe there's a lesson here. If you put all your vital irreplaceable art on Google or any other provider, then tell them that it's irreplaceable art!! Even putting art in a proper gallery usually involves some sort of agreement on insurance. Of course one could say "I'm an artist, I'm not expected to understand the real world!"
Putting it up on Google and them complaining when it disappears is like drawing with chalk on the sidewalk and then complaining when it doesn't last through the rainy season - in other words you have to use the right tools. The reason we can see some classic art today is because they used proper materials that lasted a long time.
You don't know how to read past one line.
That was Socrates, Greece as a whole never had an empire as such, and their influence certainly didn't collapse a generation after Socrates.
Like an ass. If you're not a computer person fixing busted PCs all day then you get used to shit working. It's got nothing to do with being millennial. I wish people would stop blaming every mistake on people being lazy ass millennials. The worst thing you're probably soaking up that nonsense from right wing media. Christ, a hundred years ago you'd be going on about the Irish
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
This is probably beyond the grasp of someone that doesn't think to take backups, but scavenging some of the images or even html pages from your browsers cache (assuming it hasn't been recently cleared) is possible. I don't think you will get everything, but something is certainly better than nothing.
His latest GIF novel (as the term suggests, a novel constructed with animated GIFs) was also mostly saved to the blog.
And nothing of value was lost.
GIF novel. I have several of them I think. All at 25 fps. Some call them movies.
No, that's the thing with cloud services. They are so secure and your data is so safe. That is, until the day it's not. If you need to add an SLA, backups, encryption, etc yourself, cloud storage becomes utterly worthless. You risk exposing your data to others, you still need to monitor availability, you still need to pay for redundancy. So, what was the point of this centralization of storage again?
Correction she is presumed innocent. Even though she's guilty as sin of mishandling Classified information, a crime others would be at least indicted for in a heartbeat, but she would be presumed innocent until convicted. That means she doesn't lose any rights until she's a convict. It doesn't mean she is innocent until convicted, just presumed innocent. There is a difference.
LOL. You're demonstrably wrong, and now trying to backtrack. Your claim was that the OP was wrong and the proper saying was "...googles...", and pointed to a link for more detail. When I pointed out that was wrong due to the misspelling at that source, you said that wasn't your source, which was your own experience. So, the misspelling must have been yours, or you lied about your source. Whatever, it's clear you're simply wrong and are now simply digging a deeper hole.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
His mistakes were many. J'acusse!
Congratulations on owning an honorary neckbeard.
Ignoring the TOS;
Like about 99.99% of the population.
"Experimental artwork" - come on ... this is part of the "90% of everything is crap" aka Sturgeon's Revelation; On the Internet, 99%; (see Facebook);
Translation: I think your work which I've never seen is crap so fuck you.
The crime of using a computer while stupid;
Translation: the crime of using a computer while not being an arrogant condescending neckbeard.
Too arrogant to ask for advice from someone who would know "what happens if" and how to avoid it;
Accusing someone of not knowing the right questions as arrogance = neckbeardery.
* Seeing all those ads for "external BACKUP drives" and not asking "Why would I need one?"
Or you know not realising that non local storage from a reputable company isn't trustworthy.
Ignoring all the stories of people who lose all their DATA and ACCESS to their account because of sucky passwords;
Translation: not being a neckbeard spending all his time on slashdot.
* Not keeping his mouth shut - better people think you are a fool than prove them right;
Yeah the fucker should just have kept quiet and definitely lost his work rather than having a chance of getting it back. Fuck him, I'mn a neckbeard so he can fuck right off. We're superior us techies because computers.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Better! The artist's experiment with a new medium has revealed that it is ephemeral, as are all things in life. While you might think you are working digital marble, like the sculptors of the ancients, the cyber medium is more akin to shifting sand.
I threw up in my mouth a little writing that.
Last night, my Gmail account was temporarily disabled by Google. Upon login, a screen greeted me with the message that Google has temporarily locked down my account after detecting some unusual activity. Some reasons were provided, as to what they thought could be deemed as suspicious - I was either accessing my account from multiple geolocations/was sending bouncing emails/was downloading emails with large attachments/was continuously fetching my mail via Imap/POP or most inexplicably, my browser cache was the problem. All the reasons, save the last one weren't valid in my case. I keep several tabs open and have Adblock Plus in my browser , dunno if they had a problem with any of that. They did re-enable my account the next morning, but there was nothing I could have done had they chosen to shut off my account permanently. There was no support email or phone number mentioned anywhere, and anyway I wasn't entitled for any support whatsoever. The point being, Google can be worse then the Federal Government in terms of service. You can never be sure when you run afoul of their vaguely defined TOS. Users need to be careful while entrusting their data to free service provider, that's the entire point.
You are missing the point.
This isn't really about the content. This is about the fact that he violated (possibly knowingly) the TOS for the platform he was using.
Even if he didn't know he was violating the TOS he should have backed up his stuff.
14+ years on the Interwebs... he has no excuse for remaining ignorant about backups.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Not to sound unsympathetic, but if you are foolish enough to trust the cloud, this is what happens to you. And once it does - tough, you lost your stuff. It's like jumping off a cliff, happy about the awesom view and the weightlessness, and being pissed off that there is a hard place at the bottom of it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah the fucker should just have kept quiet and definitely lost his work rather than having a chance of getting it back. Fuck him, I'mn a neckbeard so he can fuck right off. We're superior us techies because computers.
Dood! something going on in your life at the moment? I've not seen so many angry, sarcastic posts by one person for a long time
It doesn't take a neckbeard (whatever the hell that is) to figure out that "the cloud" is not a safe place to store your stuff. It just takes a bit of prudence. An artist's images are similar to business data's files in that they are their lifework and IP. So unless they are in the business of creating ephemeral art - think the sidwalk art that disappears after the next rain - You have to preserve it.
In my own field - Photography - we have to jump through a lot of hoops for permanence, specific ways to work with and treat the paper the photos are printed on storage of negatives - CD storage when that was common.
I spent and spend a lot of time making certain that what I do is recoverable. And now that I am on digital photography, there are the issues with preserving the photos and data there as well.
So now I have all of my negatives and slides scanned and backed up, and they are now sealed in an evacuated container. The resultant digital files are archived in multiple locations, on devices that I own.
If a person is making art and has an interest in preserving it, it is incumbent upon them to make certain that their method of preservation is adequate. And any casual perusal shows that the cloud is not adequate. Unfortunately, this fellow got an indelible example of just why that is the case. It's sad, but it is his fault for not doing his homework. If permanence is important, it must be important before the art or data is lost.
Now have a beer or adult beverage of your choice, and chillaxe.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
His mistakes were many. J'acusse!
"Experimental artwork" - come on ... this is part of the "90% of everything is crap" aka Sturgeon's Revelation; On the Internet, 99%; (see Facebook);
Ugh! I know a few people who have used Facebook as a place to store their photos, not checking to see what Facebook does to them.
But hey, quite a few years ago, someone at my employment had a project, and one of his photos was chosen to be the front page of a prestigious magazine. So he brought down the 3.5 by 5 linen finish photo, and told me they needed an artwork ready print. So I told him I needed the negative:
"What's that?"
"The negative. You know, the strips of plastic like material that come back from the place with the paper prints?"
"Oh - you mean those Orange things? I just toss those"
"Ohhh boy"
Needless to say, the resulting cover was lacking a bit. You can only do much making a copy neg from a small linen surface print.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Google's motto was once "Don't be evil." It now seems to be "Don't! Be evil!" If you don't have YOUR OWN backups, on servers that YOU control, then everything you do is subject to random, capricious, even malicious, deletion and unavailability. We'll never know if somebody at Google objected to his work, or if some rogue admin accidentally deleted it, or if it was corrupted in some file system problem. But anything that's in Blogger especially is ephemeral and subject to loss.
Amazon has an "unlimited" cloud storage plan that's not particularly expensive; and USB flash drives these days are remarkably affordable.
Backups are good. Multiple backups are better.
If you give someone else control of your stuff, so that they can "take care of you", then you are effectivly a slave to that person.
And with "the cloud", you don't even know who that person -is-.
Of course not. Backing something up is a mark of wimpishness.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
For around $100.00/year, you can run a dozen blogs on your own hosting site. Sell space to a few people and it's free. For around $0/year, you can back up your work/art/pics/videos to your own cloud space in said hosting account or, gosh I never thought of it, to your own damn computer.
I was at an experimental art performance once, and I figured that it isn't experimental if it can't fail. The soprano was a very good friend of mine, and she was very good. She'd have been better with better material, but at least she got paid for it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
First law of computers - only a fool doesn't keep at least one backup - and ideally as many as possible.. No matter how difficult it is, no matter how awkward. It is a simple absolute given that sooner or later any single point of failure will eventually fail, always. Usually at the worst time. This is especially true when you rely on online services like Google - failure modes not only include technical failure, but also hacking, design changes, legal restrictions, or account control failure like in this case. his only real hope is to contact Google and beg and complain until they do something.. I'm sorry for him.
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
In that case, really Google will not have lost them because they would not have been its to keep. Really *you* will have lost them by having not performed even a modicum of due diligence. Even if this dipshit hadn't been using teh intarwebs for 14 years, just plain common sense is that if you value something, you don't just hand the only copy to a stranger. WTF is an "Experimental author and artist" ? Methinks code for "barista".
One of my fears was that either Yahoo or Gmail would simply pack up or discontinue their email with no notice. That is why one of my (at least once a month) is to make sure I download all emails/content from Gmail, Yahoo and Facebook (if you are not familiar with Facebooks way to download an archive of your facebook account you may want to look into it).
--
Time is on my side
See http://thenextweb.com/facebook... Facebook is the ultimate "cloud service", and it too can delete your account and data... just because.
tldr; backup all your Facebook friends' (OK, maybe just the real friends) contact info offline. Ditto for calendars. Beware of syncing any device with facebook.
> Editorâ(TM)s note: This is a guest post by Chris Leydon, a freelance videographer
> and former startup founder. He organises the Tomorrow's Web series of
> meetups and documents London's tech community with his video production
> company Keyone Productions.
The "reason" he got for his Facebook account being disabled was...
> Upon investigation, we have determined that you are ineligible to use Facebook.
> Unfortunately, for safety and security reasons, we cannot provide additional
> information as to why your account was disabled. This decision is final.
He got onto Twiiter and actually managed to get the attention of a live person at Facebook UK, not some script-reader in Mumbai...
> I got a reply within an hour, saying that my query was being looked into,
> but no guarantees on finding out why my account has been disabled or
> reinstating it. The following day I received a further reply saying that
> unfortunately, due to a shared personal connection, he was unable to
> help or assist me in my situation because of a "user protection policy".
The consequences...
> Earlier on that day there had been an update to the Facebook page for the event
> I was attending, a change of location. Instinctively I logged into Facebook and
> saw that "Your account has been disabled message" again. I didn't know
> where I was supposed to go and I couldn't check Facebook to find out either.
> No worries, I have the event stored in a calendar on my Windows Phone.
> I flicked open to my calendar and looked for the appointment and it wasn't
> there. The calendar was syncing with Facebook and when my account
> became disabled, for security reasons, all of my Facebook events were
> removed from my calendar. Shit.
> Not a problem, I'll phone Russell, he was organising the event so could tell
> me where to go. I searched for Russell's number in my contacts andâ¦
> no results, he'd vanished. James? He was there as an email address and a
> Twitter handle but no phone number. Sean? Same again. My phone's contacts
> had been syncing with Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, but not actually
> saving any data to the phone or Exchange. All of the numbers were being
> pulled in from Facebook and without a Facebook account, I didn't have
> any Facebook friends and no numbers to pull in. Fuck.
> Luckily my text messages were still safe, I wasn't completely lost. I found
> an old text thread with Russell, phoned him and added the number as a
> new contact to my phone. I was saved for the evening and it turned out
> not to be quite the disaster I feared, but it started to dawn on me just how
> much Iâ(TM)d grown to rely on one platform.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
it's possible that all are true, and it's just a general downhill spiral...
At the end of his life, Picasso made lots of copies of the same sketch. He had no respect for his fans.
He was known to draw a sketch on a napkin and leave it as a tip. Those were worth thousands at the time and tens of thousands now.
More basically, digital art is different. There is no original.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This happened to me and my blog and I was able to contact Google with the information regarding my blog and they were able to restore my email address and my blog. It took about a week to go through the process but I did get it all back.
so why is it that you think that any thing on the web is save or even safe. For more the 20 years people have been saying the same thing, the only place data is is safe is in your head. And most of all always back up in 3 different medias if you value your work. More so now day’s property theft from everyone, no backup with date stamp means you lost your rights. How can you prove it, it is your work or even that it is yours. Because of lawyers we have to always proof that we did the work, in some other place other than work. Or that we did any of the work at all. So if you are going to back up any thing here is the rules. It is your data so the only one that is responsible is you. No one will ever take care of your things, like you will. It dose not matter what company and how much you may pay for the service you are just a number. And last but not least it your data is out of your possession you no longer have control or the same rights to it. This means that data is no longer yours, it is now in the public domain. What this means the company that is bucking up or holding your data is beholding only to 2 persons. One it self and the government of where it’s belongs to, that means today any can view it at any time. And now here is the kicker you no longer have any rights to privacy, and in some cases you lost most right to it. But you do have one right if anything of that data can be used to incriminate you of any crime, that will be used to do so. And if you think you have the right of a person well read the law, and it describes how you may have lost those rights as of past 37 years. And if you country is still let you have dose rights make sure that the banking and corporate entities do not take those rights. Because then you will be like most America and the UK, Canadian, Australian and Most of Europa. The people are consider property or as they claimer to correct national product for the gross product. That is why they so much controversy for encryption of any device or data. So would you spend $50.00 on a hard drive or a web service, now that you know your rights. And there is the other point $50.00 how much and for how long on the web. Now a USB flash or cost how much and will last what 5 to 10 year just doing backup of data. Today you can get 2 USB flash drives of 32Gb or 64 GB or a 500 GB up to 1 Tb external hard drive. Yes $50.00 more or less the point it is your data, If you think that just because you paid for some software that will that will give the rights to that work. Think again read those agreements and see how much of it is really yours. So what can you do to recover the work, this just gave you and idea of how much you are SOL. Some claimed something and now you have to prove that it is your, you can put a XXX on the cover. Now you are going down for improper for those sensitive eyes or ideals. You my friend are do for long road, best of luck to you.
Cloud storage is only a convenient way to keep revisions of a file concurrent between several terminals. Anything that only exists only in a cloud is as ephemeral as a daydream.
Web based email is for when you want a quick check from another's terminal. Get a real email client and learn out to archive. Oh, wow, even some of the free email clients will back up correspondence automatically! Leave web based email for grandmothers discussing the latest cat video. (Yes, you can even pop serve gmail and hotmail to keep a record copy on your hard drive.)
Face it, leaving the only copy of digital art out on a hard drive hosted by someone with no fiscal interest in the work is like leaving a large format oil painting in the hands of volunteers for a sidewalk art expo and not asking about the work until a month after the show.
NRRPT/RCT
Here's the kicker - the way that they totally disabled everything (email etc) instead of just the blog, he's probably being investigated for distributing online pornography or for the prostitute ads he posted regularly. Now for the rest ...
People losing data is on the major media all the time. Stop being a neckbeard yourself - go watch some TV news. People having their accounts hacked and losing access to all their files, Apple being a good example.
Why not then go outside, breathe some fresh air, take a walk, etc. He was in clear violation of the TOS for a LOOONG time, intentionally - as you can see from the article, he likes to push things beyond the edge. And this time it blew up in his face. So fuck him.
If he had this shit on his laptop while traveling and customs found it, they would have seized it. Ditto if he had been looking at it in a public place and someone reported it. So he got off lightly by getting away with it for 14 years.
And he probably doesn't have his passwords backed up either, so if someone had stolen his porntop, he would have lost access to everything - including his online crap when whoever ended up with it logs in and replaces his stuff with pictures of cats for the lulz.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
He's overlooking the fact that the guy admits that an integral part of his blog was ads for prostitutes. "Artistic and literary merit" ... yeah, sure, whatever you say Frank.
They did more than disable his blog - they shut down everything. They didn't have to shut down his email, which was a different service from blogger. That's what you do when you're a service provider told to preserve evidence. We may not have heard the end of this story ... :-)
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Better! The artist's experiment with a new medium has revealed that it is ephemeral, as are all things in life. While you might think you are working digital marble, like the sculptors of the ancients, the cyber medium is more akin to shifting sand.
I threw up in my mouth a little writing that.
I think you should put that into a federal grant application. :-)