Good logic except for the fact the Google has openly admitted to scanning customer data. Would you expect someone to go with any smaller hosting service with a contract that reserves them the right to own admin rights to your server and scan it at will, without reservation?
Since the average shashdotter seems to think third party server clusters a.k.a. "The Cloud" are good and secure and useful for all us human beings and the intentions of said third parties are all well and good; I'm surprised that no one has suggested that the NSA should just use Google Docs or Facebook and get over the supreme silliness and unneccesary cost of private servers. Oo. Or what about Google Wave. I'm sure there's something in that for the NSA, it is the new cool thing after all.
Is it really easy to switch? In my mind, switching completely involves:
1. Take everything from site A and create on site B
2. Remove everything from site A completely
To my knowledge, step 2 is impossible on most sites.
Another big advantage of BackupPC is that it only actually backs up file contents once, even if the files exist across 10 machines. In other words, back up three windows machines at the same level and you're really only writing one instance of windows to the actual backup drive. BackupPC tracks and manages links to the actual files appropriately for each machine. I use backuppc in my house as well but it just runs on a VM on my main machine.
I have three repositories:
- A 2TB internal raid 10 composed of four 1 Tb drives
- An external USB drive that acts as a repository for BackupPC
- A plain external USB drive at my parent's house
-Almost everything (ie. easly replacable) goes on my 2Tb RAID 10 except for the stuff that is on the solo primary drive, which is backed up with BackupPC on an external USB drive
-The hard to replace stuff goes on the RAID and has incremental backups via BackupPC
-The impossible to replace stuff gets all three. on the RAID, backup with BackupPC, rsync every four hours to the drive at my parent's house.
..but why should I have to 'opt out'? Should I not be able to assume that I can maintain complete ownership of any file that is mine; even if uploaded to Facebook? I'm not sure how these pages are found but the facebook gui seems a complete disorganized mess to me. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to find every isolated page that turns off some sort of aspect of sharing. Where is the button that says 'share nothing', and then the link to the page with all different aspects of sharing that I can go through one by one? Where is the 'delete all content permanently' button? Where is the 'Facebook is not allowed to use any aspect of my profile, ever' button?
It just seems like a catastrophe waiting to happen. They almost seem to be preying on people's lack of interest in searching for options and making it as difficult as possible to find them. It reminds me of CD clubs that will send you 'this months sample' automatically hoping that you will find it too much effort to return and just pay for it.
We've already seen amusing stories about US/Canadian citizens by chance finding their faces plastered all over stores in Czechoslovakia it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously screwed over by lack of controls on privacy. Everyone on slashdot knows how to properly use or not use Facebook but everyone on slashdot is not most people on Facebook. I think the average Facebook user has no idea how much risk they could put themselves under.
Furthermore, if we are going to go forward with the cloud mentality I think the Canadian government is asking some important questions! How do we have a central cloud that acts as a repository of data but yet not sacrifice each and every individual's right to maintain absolute control over their own data? I am Canadian and for the record I tend to not like a lot of things about the running of the Canadian government but sorry folks I think they got this one right.
I set up my own email server in my house to avoid these issues and I will not be comfortable putting any of my personal life on remote servers until these things are hashed out.
I was ready to post and hang my head low and apologize for all fellow Canadians. However, I just flipped to my local city major newspaper and the online poll question is "Should Internet service providers be allowed to manage and prioritize online traffic?". Currently out of 688 votes, the result is a resounding 85% 'NO'. Maybe there is hope for us yet.
Well, I'm basically a linux guy but I have to play devil's advocate here. Say this guy is named Harry.
Scenario 1: Harry tries to install Windows based business server with apps for months and cannot do it.
What his co-workers say: Poor Harry, that machine will just not cooperate with him. Stupid windows.
Scenario 2: Harry tries to install linux server with adapted linux app and it takes him weeks.
What his co-workers say: Harry thinks he's a tech bigshot and used linux and now he's having trouble. What an idiot.
Everyone who works in an average workplace knows this is true. I'd rather take scenario 1 myself.
Companies trust their critical data and resources to other companies all the time... There are companies who specialize in storing or destroying massive quantities of hard copy documents for instance, not to mention courier or security companies.
You just disproved your whole case, the key word is TRUST which apparently doesn't have a place in the business world.
My company has strict policies to ensure NO hard drive leaves the site with data. Trusting someone else with business communications is foolhardy.
I'm one of the incorporated IT consultants.. On the other side of that I would say that tech isn't necessarily all about staying up to date either. Perhaps if you are a developer it is important to (be able to say you) know the new hot languages but on the hardware side things change more slowly and it is important to know mainly what you work in.
Also, I use my soft skills on a daily basis. I need to work with many different teams, I need political skills, I thrive as a consultant because I have very good communication skills, and I am running my own company after all so yes I have to do budgeting if I want my company to thrive.
Myself, I would not trust an offline backup. An offline backup cannot be checked; so you are exposing yourself to weaknesses in the physical hard drive design when sitting.
I backup my most important files to a drive sitting online to a PC at another site. An rsync goes through all files four times a day. Not only will it catch any differences, but it will also catch drive failures as well.
I use backuppc myself. My backups all go (versioned) to a single external hard drive. The nice thing about backuppc is that no file is ever duplicated. Backup one windows PC or fifty, the windows files will not be duplicated. Likewise if you've copied a movie or a collection of photos to various PCs in your house.
I also rsync my most important files offsite to a drive I have connected to my parent's PC.
This is on top of having 4x1Tb disks set up as a 2Tb RAID 10 array.
I think the problem is that a device's manufacturing costs mainly come from the type of hardware features that it has. A pure PDF reader needs a processor, a good screen, volatile storage, non-volatile storage, a way to transfer the books to the device, battery, human interaction interface, etc etc. In other words it basically needs to be an iPhone or tablet PC 'hardware-wise' but you want it crippled so that it is only a PDF reader. Well no one is ever going to make such a device, because its hardware will force it to be on the same price point as other more capable devices but if it can only read PDFs who is going to buy it?
The problem I've had with bookshelf or any PDF reader on the iPhone is a lack of any kind of search within the document. Even being able to flip to the next chapter would be nice, but a minimum requirement for me is to be able to search on a string, find all instances within the PDF and cycle from instance to instance. Every reader I have tried has failed in this regard.
Slashdot Mirror
Good logic except for the fact the Google has openly admitted to scanning customer data. Would you expect someone to go with any smaller hosting service with a contract that reserves them the right to own admin rights to your server and scan it at will, without reservation?
What is the difference between this and the various poker sites that have been outlawed in the US ?
People use Kazaa for large files? I thought Kazaa was for small files and bittorrent was for large ones. Now I'm confused.
...like the whole 'what will life be like without Mainframes' discussion of ten years ago.
Ick.. I'm a sysadmin and if I had to do that stuff (crawling along dirty floors) I'd quit.
Hey it sounds neat, but if it doesn't run in an environment I control, on a system that I build, it's useless to me.
Since the average shashdotter seems to think third party server clusters a.k.a. "The Cloud" are good and secure and useful for all us human beings and the intentions of said third parties are all well and good; I'm surprised that no one has suggested that the NSA should just use Google Docs or Facebook and get over the supreme silliness and unneccesary cost of private servers. Oo. Or what about Google Wave. I'm sure there's something in that for the NSA, it is the new cool thing after all.
Last I checked, Google Docs cannot be encrypted.
Of course, I very well might be wrong.
Is it really easy to switch? In my mind, switching completely involves:
1. Take everything from site A and create on site B
2. Remove everything from site A completely
To my knowledge, step 2 is impossible on most sites.
Another big advantage of BackupPC is that it only actually backs up file contents once, even if the files exist across 10 machines. In other words, back up three windows machines at the same level and you're really only writing one instance of windows to the actual backup drive. BackupPC tracks and manages links to the actual files appropriately for each machine. I use backuppc in my house as well but it just runs on a VM on my main machine.
Yeah entrust my stuff to some third party and use my precious internet bandwidth to get it there to boot.. I think not!
I second this.. I do this as well.
I have three repositories:
- A 2TB internal raid 10 composed of four 1 Tb drives
- An external USB drive that acts as a repository for BackupPC
- A plain external USB drive at my parent's house
-Almost everything (ie. easly replacable) goes on my 2Tb RAID 10 except for the stuff that is on the solo primary drive, which is backed up with BackupPC on an external USB drive
-The hard to replace stuff goes on the RAID and has incremental backups via BackupPC
-The impossible to replace stuff gets all three. on the RAID, backup with BackupPC, rsync every four hours to the drive at my parent's house.
..but why should I have to 'opt out'? Should I not be able to assume that I can maintain complete ownership of any file that is mine; even if uploaded to Facebook? I'm not sure how these pages are found but the facebook gui seems a complete disorganized mess to me. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to find every isolated page that turns off some sort of aspect of sharing. Where is the button that says 'share nothing', and then the link to the page with all different aspects of sharing that I can go through one by one? Where is the 'delete all content permanently' button? Where is the 'Facebook is not allowed to use any aspect of my profile, ever' button?
It just seems like a catastrophe waiting to happen. They almost seem to be preying on people's lack of interest in searching for options and making it as difficult as possible to find them. It reminds me of CD clubs that will send you 'this months sample' automatically hoping that you will find it too much effort to return and just pay for it.
We've already seen amusing stories about US/Canadian citizens by chance finding their faces plastered all over stores in Czechoslovakia it's only a matter of time before someone gets seriously screwed over by lack of controls on privacy. Everyone on slashdot knows how to properly use or not use Facebook but everyone on slashdot is not most people on Facebook. I think the average Facebook user has no idea how much risk they could put themselves under.
Furthermore, if we are going to go forward with the cloud mentality I think the Canadian government is asking some important questions! How do we have a central cloud that acts as a repository of data but yet not sacrifice each and every individual's right to maintain absolute control over their own data? I am Canadian and for the record I tend to not like a lot of things about the running of the Canadian government but sorry folks I think they got this one right.
I set up my own email server in my house to avoid these issues and I will not be comfortable putting any of my personal life on remote servers until these things are hashed out.
Uhm.. If memory serves me correctly, US anti-gambling laws were applied to websites with their servers not even on this continent.
I was ready to post and hang my head low and apologize for all fellow Canadians. However, I just flipped to my local city major newspaper and the online poll question is "Should Internet service providers be allowed to manage and prioritize online traffic?". Currently out of 688 votes, the result is a resounding 85% 'NO'. Maybe there is hope for us yet.
The solution for you would be keypass
Well, I'm basically a linux guy but I have to play devil's advocate here. Say this guy is named Harry.
Scenario 1: Harry tries to install Windows based business server with apps for months and cannot do it.
What his co-workers say: Poor Harry, that machine will just not cooperate with him. Stupid windows.
Scenario 2: Harry tries to install linux server with adapted linux app and it takes him weeks.
What his co-workers say: Harry thinks he's a tech bigshot and used linux and now he's having trouble. What an idiot.
Everyone who works in an average workplace knows this is true. I'd rather take scenario 1 myself.
Companies trust their critical data and resources to other companies all the time... There are companies who specialize in storing or destroying massive quantities of hard copy documents for instance, not to mention courier or security companies.
You just disproved your whole case, the key word is TRUST which apparently doesn't have a place in the business world.
My company has strict policies to ensure NO hard drive leaves the site with data. Trusting someone else with business communications is foolhardy.
"Linux and open source have long struggled to gain acceptance from the wider (read, non-technical) audience"
Do they really? Consensus on Slashdot seems to be "If they can't figure it out, screw 'em".
I'm one of the incorporated IT consultants.. On the other side of that I would say that tech isn't necessarily all about staying up to date either. Perhaps if you are a developer it is important to (be able to say you) know the new hot languages but on the hardware side things change more slowly and it is important to know mainly what you work in.
Also, I use my soft skills on a daily basis. I need to work with many different teams, I need political skills, I thrive as a consultant because I have very good communication skills, and I am running my own company after all so yes I have to do budgeting if I want my company to thrive.
Myself, I would not trust an offline backup. An offline backup cannot be checked; so you are exposing yourself to weaknesses in the physical hard drive design when sitting.
I backup my most important files to a drive sitting online to a PC at another site. An rsync goes through all files four times a day. Not only will it catch any differences, but it will also catch drive failures as well.
I use backuppc myself. My backups all go (versioned) to a single external hard drive. The nice thing about backuppc is that no file is ever duplicated. Backup one windows PC or fifty, the windows files will not be duplicated. Likewise if you've copied a movie or a collection of photos to various PCs in your house.
I also rsync my most important files offsite to a drive I have connected to my parent's PC.
This is on top of having 4x1Tb disks set up as a 2Tb RAID 10 array.
I think the problem is that a device's manufacturing costs mainly come from the type of hardware features that it has. A pure PDF reader needs a processor, a good screen, volatile storage, non-volatile storage, a way to transfer the books to the device, battery, human interaction interface, etc etc. In other words it basically needs to be an iPhone or tablet PC 'hardware-wise' but you want it crippled so that it is only a PDF reader. Well no one is ever going to make such a device, because its hardware will force it to be on the same price point as other more capable devices but if it can only read PDFs who is going to buy it?
The problem I've had with bookshelf or any PDF reader on the iPhone is a lack of any kind of search within the document. Even being able to flip to the next chapter would be nice, but a minimum requirement for me is to be able to search on a string, find all instances within the PDF and cycle from instance to instance. Every reader I have tried has failed in this regard.