I'm in the same situation... I don't know who to sue to right these ancestral slights. I've considered suing latter-day Norwegians (for slaughtering my British ancestors) and Brits (for prejudicial behaviour when my Viking ancestors came calling).... oh dear. I could wind up suing myself.:)
Sounds like you must live between Billings and Hardin... when I lived in MT (20 years ago now), if you lived on that reservation you could not buy life insurance, because you could get someone offed for a measley five bucks, and it happened fairly often. So everyone there was considered too high-risk to insure.
And I totally agree with you about the welfare system!!
Someone correct me if I'm imagining things, but wasn't Soundforge 4.5 offered as a free download BY Sony??... cuz not long ago someone pointed me at Sony as a source for a [legit] free copy, but I couldn't find it on brief look at their site.
Of course, they may have been imagining things too for all I know:)
I had a similar thought: this sounds to me like M$ refocusing on their own strengths, rather than trying to overreach to support something that's not really in their marketsphere anyway. I doubt it really has anything to do with Itanium's future, or lack thereof as the case may be.
[article type="doomed"] -- FOO decides not to support BAR, which they never really did in the first place... -- Slashdot immediately cries in full tongue, "BAR is dying!!" [/article]
Well, so far I haven't had anything but good experiences with them; same for other folk I know using them. But if I have bad experiences in the future, I'm not married to them, and don't have a problem changing hosts (at the moment I'd probably look at godaddy, and maybe lunarpages since I've observed they have good stability).
Maybe it's something your granddad wrote. Maybe it's the history of your school. Who knows? But it's quite possible you might want to access old data that you didn't create or has no immediate impact on your life, other than sheer interest.
Otherwise, why do we have libraries, and keep any sort of histories or archives at all? just because it's digital doesn't make it different.
Yes! That's exactly what I was trying to think of, but my brain is suffering from bit rot, and the data couldn't be recovered... good thing I had your brain to use as a backup.:)
[goes off, digs in Closet] Look! MFM controllers!! And a perfectly good XT, and an even better 286!!
Haha, and here you thought you'd made a joke:)
But that's the point I was making about floppies. In my experience, 360k 5.25" floppy disks are THE most reliable of all consumer-level media over the past 20 years. But how many people (other than hardware packrats like myself:) still own a 5" floppy drive?
BTW, I do keep some of my most-difficult-to-reconstruct data on the above 286, and another copy on a very old IDE HD (1991 model that won't speak to anything above a 386). Not that it's the end-all and be-all of backups, but rather that it gives me another recovery *option*, however unlikely to be needed. (And yes, there is another set on 360k floppies. But I have a good dozen working 5" floppy drives.)
Now, backup TAPE... lordy, you want to talk about incompatibility from one generation to the next, not to mention random hardware and media failures!
That's true -- as the old saying goes, there are only two types of HDs: those that have already failed, and those that are going to fail.
What I was looking at was relative reliablity -- old HDs that are still chugging along will probably outlive new HDs, so it may well be that old HDs are a better backup medium.
Even so, sooner or later they're ALL going to fail. Just as all removable media, sooner or later is going to suffer from rot. There IS no good solution; all one can do is make many, redundant, and multiple-media backups, in the hope that if the worst happens, at least ONE of these survives and is still readable in the equipment one has available. (8" floppy drives, anyone?:)
True; in fact I was going to make that very point, but got distracted and forgot:)
And it depends on the value of the data. Music archives aren't really "worth" much, being mostly replaceable (even if you have to pay for it, the data is still available). The only music that has "value" in this context is something you've written yourself and not yet transcribed to paper, or computer-generated music that might be difficult or impossible to transcribe. But in most cases, you know what you did and can probably rebuild it, if at considerable cost in time and effort.
As a rule, the same might be said about financial records, source code, and anything else someone had to physically type in (what was typed once can be typed again). Still, for these cases, the relatively small size and high PITA of rebuilding such data makes storage on "old, small, but reliable" media a realistic option.
Then there's photos. Photos capture an ephemeral moment. The data recorded by that digital camera CANNOT be replaced. Your child will never take his first steps again, and "staging" a repeat performance just isn't the same. -- Given this, one has to wonder why anyone relies on digital photos as a permanent record anyway -- since in most cases, most of the data is thrown away by lossy compression (itself a sort of bit rot).
There's no really good across-the-board solution, and as your mention of RAID suggests, all we can really do is make many and redundant backups, and try to keep critical data available to our future selves. If that means you don't throw out that 5" floppy drive (because 5" 360k floppy media will still outlive almost anything else)... oh well! what's one more pile of clutter?:)
Don't be so sure... I don't remember if it was the LoC, BBC, PBS, or who (was some big archive, tho) who had this pile of old media that they had a hell of a time finding anything to read.
Got data on a 5" floppy? Okay, there are still a few machines around (old ones to be sure) that have 5" floppy drives. But how about an 8" floppy? What? You never heard of 8" floppies? Oh well... have fun getting data off that disk.
I dunno.. I've got a dozen decade-old HDs (all WDs) that show no sign of dying and are still in 100% perfect condition. I suspect they will outlive most current HDs, too, making them quite possibly MORE reliable as long-term storage.
Particularly true for domains you may manage for someone else (so you have the account password), but where the actual owner is supposed to approve major changes (such as ownership). How the hell is the registrar to know the difference between the owner logging in, and an unscrupulous manager logging in?
For the company that I cannot remember, all I can say is: stay away from small registrars, especially ones that come with a Web hosting package. I bought a hosting package, needed a domain name, and used their little built-in
registrar. What a mess. No features, and the registrar was tightly coupled with the hosting, so moving away was miserable. Stick to the known names you'll see mentioned a lot here.
I second that. Several times now, I've seen some hosting outfit essentially hijack the client's domain -- "either you host with us or we keep the domain when you leave". I've also seen such hosts "register the domain on behalf of the customer" but the hosting service or domain registrar actually owns the domain, and once again keeps it if you leave.
There's a solution to this crap, which would also drastically cut down on domain squatting in general: Web hosts and domain registrars should not be allowed to own ANY domains other than those they actually need for their business (this should also apply to any related businesses, like domain brokering).
BTW, I can recommend against parava.net/wrkg.com for exactly such practices as mentioned here.
I use GoDaddy as a registrar and 1&1 as a host, for reasons mentioned in a previous post. (Not so poetic as this one.:)
I started using GoDaddy because of the good rates (no longer the lowest, but still within reason) and the free perks. I stick with them because of the great service.
Example: A while back some of my forwarded domains ceased working, but only when I was logged into my dialup account via certain POPs. As it turned out, this was because one of Earthlink's servers was blocked somewhere down the line. Now, this wasn't even GoDaddy's problem, but they stuck with me, and worked with ELN, until the problem was fixed (it took 2 or 3 days and lots of emails).
BTW I've had similar good experiences with 1&1.com's tech support, which is why I'll be staying there even after my free promo hosting runs out.
...but when you get used to it, is there really much of a difference between typing "\emph{this is important}" or "(i)this is important(/i)" and typing "CTRL+I this is important CTRL+I"?
Well, yeah, there is. Single-key+mnemonic ("CTRL+I") is a lot easier both to learn and to type than formatted tags ("\emph{") or a formatted tag plus mnemonic (HTML-style).
Are you familiar with WPDOS's prompt system? you type the root code, say SHIFT-F8, and across the bottom of the screen you get a list of options, which you can pick by number or initial-letter. (Which if needed will go to another prompt menu, or an input page such as one might need to set margins etc.) As a rule it only takes once or twice ot learn them, because they use obvious initial-keys, such as "m" for "margins". It's both quick to learn and very fast to use, yet can be totally ignored once your fingers know the keystrokes. But if you have a brain cramp halfway through a sequence, you still have any needed help, because the prompt has kept up with your keystrokes up to that point -- so the prompt is always in context. Very nifty system.
Yeah, I know programmer types who use LaTeX for anything mathlike, or anything-parsing-textlike. Not my field but the preference seems fairly consistent among those who are "gimme a prompt and get the damn GUI outta my way" types.
What do I prefer to Emacs? Just about anything else! I only messed with it a little bit, then ran away screaming.:)
I think you have to pick the "Extrans" option to type angle-brackets without resorting to posting in HTML and using the HTML character code for angle-brackets. Normally I post in Plain Old Text, so I lazily sub square brackets most of the time myself (having learned that/.'s notion of plaintext EATS angle-brackets). I see there's a new "code" option too, which presumably is for source code posts.
[laughing] I grew up largely on country music. And while I like lots of other stuff too (pretty much anything except [c]rap and its relations)... I still enjoy country. Not the pop-hybrid crap, but the real thing.
As you point out, most of the *good* country artists actually write their own songs. And what you hear is what you get: when you hear 'em live, they sound just about identical to the studio recording.
Sadly, an awful lot of big-name rock bands are absolutely terrible live -- can't sing or play for shit in real life. Makes you realise how necessary a good producer is to make their studio recordings sound decent.
BTW thanks for the links. I'd like to find more on the order of Lyle Lovett (who I recently saw live -- seats started at $5, at the Hollywood Bowl!!), Dave Stamey, etc. Looks like a good place to start.
I've had similar experiences. Frex, one song I'd downloaded (somewhat random, I just liked the title) caught my ear, I loved it, so I downloaded a bunch more by the same group -- and at first didn't like a lot of 'em (they were kinda interesting, but annoying). After a few times through the playlist, I found I was tired of the song that had initially caught my ear, but now my favourites were the tunes I'd liked *least* on initial exposure!
And shortly thereafter, I went forth and bought several albums by this group -- whom I'd never heard of, and still would not know about, if it weren't for the files I'd downloaded. About that time, the band began offering MP3s on their own site too, so they must have at least some clue...
There are only two times in my life when I've *purchased* music regularly, and in both cases it was due to exposure: when I was DJing ca. 1980 (the station had a massive library, and I could copy any LP that I cared to tape) -- and when I had good access to MP3s. My MP3 access went to hell when I moved (it just isn't practical on 26k dialup, and radio here is nonexistent) and my exposure to music went with it -- and funny thing, I haven't bought a single CD since.
The fact is, when tunes found as MP3s catch my attention, I begin lusting after hardcopy, because an original CD is the best of backups.
Every other industry understands that *nothing* creates sales better than free samples. And that's all radio and MP3s really are -- free samples. But that's NOT what worries the RIAA cartel:
They're worried about losing control of the distribution channel. After all, if any band can distribute their stuff thru MP3s (as their advertising) and small-run CDs sold off their own website, who the hell needs the RIAA cartel? And there goes the cartel's cut of the profits. (Er, their near-100% of the profits.)
Depends on what you're doing with it, and where you're coming from. I don't know TeX myself, but from what I've heard, it makes programmers very happy, and frustrates hell out of everyone else.
WP's keyboard controls are grouped by function, and you only really need to know the root function -- the prompts will guide you beyond that. I never had any trouble with them. Conversely Wordstar's kb shortcuts (which Windows largely inherited) refused to stick in my head. That's probably why I still use the keyboard commands in WPDOS, but the mouse and menubar in Windows.
Speaking of math, WP5.1 catered to math types too -- it had a really good equation editor (it was used to typeset several advanced math textbooks). And remember it has those extended character sets, too (about 1200 special characters available).
Disclaimer rebuttal: emacs is an invention of the devil.;)
That's what some of us have been railing at Novell about for years -- businesses GROW. The business that uses one server and two workstations now, in a few years might need 50 servers and 500 workstations. And it's easier to add to an existing network than it is to shift everything to a whole different setup. So don't be trying to suck everything out of 'em on first contact, by only selling 10-lic. packs -- let 'em grow at their own pace, into a partnership that benefits everyone.
If I were Novell's marketing dept, I'd do this:
Give away one copy of the server OS, plus 3 workstation licenses. (Essentially the same CD they've handed out at Netware upgrade launches for years; sometimes timebombed, sometimes not. But should be unlimited use for this purpose.) Let small business get used to it and entrenched in it. Sell 'em subsequent server and single workstation licences whenever they need one (even if it IS just *one*). DON'T discourage folk from adding to their network as they grow!
Slashdot Mirror
I'm in the same situation... I don't know who to sue to right these ancestral slights. I've considered suing latter-day Norwegians (for slaughtering my British ancestors) and Brits (for prejudicial behaviour when my Viking ancestors came calling) .... oh dear. I could wind up suing myself. :)
Sounds like you must live between Billings and Hardin... when I lived in MT (20 years ago now), if you lived on that reservation you could not buy life insurance, because you could get someone offed for a measley five bucks, and it happened fairly often. So everyone there was considered too high-risk to insure.
And I totally agree with you about the welfare system!!
Someone correct me if I'm imagining things, but wasn't Soundforge 4.5 offered as a free download BY Sony?? ... cuz not long ago someone pointed me at Sony as a source for a [legit] free copy, but I couldn't find it on brief look at their site.
:)
Of course, they may have been imagining things too for all I know
I had a similar thought: this sounds to me like M$ refocusing on their own strengths, rather than trying to overreach to support something that's not really in their marketsphere anyway. I doubt it really has anything to do with Itanium's future, or lack thereof as the case may be.
;)
[article type="doomed"]
-- FOO decides not to support BAR, which they never really did in the first place...
-- Slashdot immediately cries in full tongue, "BAR is dying!!"
[/article]
There! All such future stories are now dupes.
Not if your disk labeling and sorting system looks like mine ;)
Well, so far I haven't had anything but good experiences with them; same for other folk I know using them. But if I have bad experiences in the future, I'm not married to them, and don't have a problem changing hosts (at the moment I'd probably look at godaddy, and maybe lunarpages since I've observed they have good stability).
Maybe it's something your granddad wrote. Maybe it's the history of your school. Who knows? But it's quite possible you might want to access old data that you didn't create or has no immediate impact on your life, other than sheer interest.
Otherwise, why do we have libraries, and keep any sort of histories or archives at all? just because it's digital doesn't make it different.
Hmm... you're right. Here's your mod point... but you gotta take the old rotten brain with it. ;)
Yes! That's exactly what I was trying to think of, but my brain is suffering from bit rot, and the data couldn't be recovered... good thing I had your brain to use as a backup. :)
[goes off, digs in Closet] Look! MFM controllers!! And a perfectly good XT, and an even better 286!!
:)
:) still own a 5" floppy drive?
Haha, and here you thought you'd made a joke
But that's the point I was making about floppies. In my experience, 360k 5.25" floppy disks are THE most reliable of all consumer-level media over the past 20 years. But how many people (other than hardware packrats like myself
BTW, I do keep some of my most-difficult-to-reconstruct data on the above 286, and another copy on a very old IDE HD (1991 model that won't speak to anything above a 386). Not that it's the end-all and be-all of backups, but rather that it gives me another recovery *option*, however unlikely to be needed. (And yes, there is another set on 360k floppies. But I have a good dozen working 5" floppy drives.)
Now, backup TAPE... lordy, you want to talk about incompatibility from one generation to the next, not to mention random hardware and media failures!
That's true -- as the old saying goes, there are only two types of HDs: those that have already failed, and those that are going to fail.
:)
What I was looking at was relative reliablity -- old HDs that are still chugging along will probably outlive new HDs, so it may well be that old HDs are a better backup medium.
Even so, sooner or later they're ALL going to fail. Just as all removable media, sooner or later is going to suffer from rot. There IS no good solution; all one can do is make many, redundant, and multiple-media backups, in the hope that if the worst happens, at least ONE of these survives and is still readable in the equipment one has available. (8" floppy drives, anyone?
True; in fact I was going to make that very point, but got distracted and forgot :)
... oh well! what's one more pile of clutter? :)
And it depends on the value of the data. Music archives aren't really "worth" much, being mostly replaceable (even if you have to pay for it, the data is still available). The only music that has "value" in this context is something you've written yourself and not yet transcribed to paper, or computer-generated music that might be difficult or impossible to transcribe. But in most cases, you know what you did and can probably rebuild it, if at considerable cost in time and effort.
As a rule, the same might be said about financial records, source code, and anything else someone had to physically type in (what was typed once can be typed again). Still, for these cases, the relatively small size and high PITA of rebuilding such data makes storage on "old, small, but reliable" media a realistic option.
Then there's photos. Photos capture an ephemeral moment. The data recorded by that digital camera CANNOT be replaced. Your child will never take his first steps again, and "staging" a repeat performance just isn't the same. -- Given this, one has to wonder why anyone relies on digital photos as a permanent record anyway -- since in most cases, most of the data is thrown away by lossy compression (itself a sort of bit rot).
There's no really good across-the-board solution, and as your mention of RAID suggests, all we can really do is make many and redundant backups, and try to keep critical data available to our future selves. If that means you don't throw out that 5" floppy drive (because 5" 360k floppy media will still outlive almost anything else)
Don't be so sure... I don't remember if it was the LoC, BBC, PBS, or who (was some big archive, tho) who had this pile of old media that they had a hell of a time finding anything to read.
Got data on a 5" floppy? Okay, there are still a few machines around (old ones to be sure) that have 5" floppy drives. But how about an 8" floppy? What? You never heard of 8" floppies? Oh well... have fun getting data off that disk.
I dunno.. I've got a dozen decade-old HDs (all WDs) that show no sign of dying and are still in 100% perfect condition. I suspect they will outlive most current HDs, too, making them quite possibly MORE reliable as long-term storage.
Particularly true for domains you may manage for someone else (so you have the account password), but where the actual owner is supposed to approve major changes (such as ownership). How the hell is the registrar to know the difference between the owner logging in, and an unscrupulous manager logging in?
I second that. Several times now, I've seen some hosting outfit essentially hijack the client's domain -- "either you host with us or we keep the domain when you leave". I've also seen such hosts "register the domain on behalf of the customer" but the hosting service or domain registrar actually owns the domain, and once again keeps it if you leave.
There's a solution to this crap, which would also drastically cut down on domain squatting in general: Web hosts and domain registrars should not be allowed to own ANY domains other than those they actually need for their business (this should also apply to any related businesses, like domain brokering).
BTW, I can recommend against parava.net/wrkg.com for exactly such practices as mentioned here.
I use GoDaddy as a registrar and 1&1 as a host, for reasons mentioned in a previous post. (Not so poetic as this one. :)
I started using GoDaddy because of the good rates (no longer the lowest, but still within reason) and the free perks. I stick with them because of the great service.
Example: A while back some of my forwarded domains ceased working, but only when I was logged into my dialup account via certain POPs. As it turned out, this was because one of Earthlink's servers was blocked somewhere down the line. Now, this wasn't even GoDaddy's problem, but they stuck with me, and worked with ELN, until the problem was fixed (it took 2 or 3 days and lots of emails).
BTW I've had similar good experiences with 1&1.com's tech support, which is why I'll be staying there even after my free promo hosting runs out.
Already gave the URL to a friend. :)
Well, yeah, there is. Single-key+mnemonic ("CTRL+I") is a lot easier both to learn and to type than formatted tags ("\emph{") or a formatted tag plus mnemonic (HTML-style).
Are you familiar with WPDOS's prompt system? you type the root code, say SHIFT-F8, and across the bottom of the screen you get a list of options, which you can pick by number or initial-letter. (Which if needed will go to another prompt menu, or an input page such as one might need to set margins etc.) As a rule it only takes once or twice ot learn them, because they use obvious initial-keys, such as "m" for "margins". It's both quick to learn and very fast to use, yet can be totally ignored once your fingers know the keystrokes. But if you have a brain cramp halfway through a sequence, you still have any needed help, because the prompt has kept up with your keystrokes up to that point -- so the prompt is always in context. Very nifty system.
Yeah, I know programmer types who use LaTeX for anything mathlike, or anything-parsing-textlike. Not my field but the preference seems fairly consistent among those who are "gimme a prompt and get the damn GUI outta my way" types.
What do I prefer to Emacs? Just about anything else! I only messed with it a little bit, then ran away screaming. :)
I think you have to pick the "Extrans" option to type angle-brackets without resorting to posting in HTML and using the HTML character code for angle-brackets. Normally I post in Plain Old Text, so I lazily sub square brackets most of the time myself (having learned that /.'s notion of plaintext EATS angle-brackets). I see there's a new "code" option too, which presumably is for source code posts.
[laughing] I grew up largely on country music. And while I like lots of other stuff too (pretty much anything except [c]rap and its relations) ... I still enjoy country. Not the pop-hybrid crap, but the real thing.
As you point out, most of the *good* country artists actually write their own songs. And what you hear is what you get: when you hear 'em live, they sound just about identical to the studio recording.
Sadly, an awful lot of big-name rock bands are absolutely terrible live -- can't sing or play for shit in real life. Makes you realise how necessary a good producer is to make their studio recordings sound decent.
BTW thanks for the links. I'd like to find more on the order of Lyle Lovett (who I recently saw live -- seats started at $5, at the Hollywood Bowl!!), Dave Stamey, etc. Looks like a good place to start.
Surpreme irony: yesterday I followed your sig, and found an MP3. :)
(Not bad. I'll probably come back and get some more.)
I've had similar experiences. Frex, one song I'd downloaded (somewhat random, I just liked the title) caught my ear, I loved it, so I downloaded a bunch more by the same group -- and at first didn't like a lot of 'em (they were kinda interesting, but annoying). After a few times through the playlist, I found I was tired of the song that had initially caught my ear, but now my favourites were the tunes I'd liked *least* on initial exposure!
And shortly thereafter, I went forth and bought several albums by this group -- whom I'd never heard of, and still would not know about, if it weren't for the files I'd downloaded. About that time, the band began offering MP3s on their own site too, so they must have at least some clue...
There are only two times in my life when I've *purchased* music regularly, and in both cases it was due to exposure: when I was DJing ca. 1980 (the station had a massive library, and I could copy any LP that I cared to tape) -- and when I had good access to MP3s. My MP3 access went to hell when I moved (it just isn't practical on 26k dialup, and radio here is nonexistent) and my exposure to music went with it -- and funny thing, I haven't bought a single CD since.
The fact is, when tunes found as MP3s catch my attention, I begin lusting after hardcopy, because an original CD is the best of backups.
Every other industry understands that *nothing* creates sales better than free samples. And that's all radio and MP3s really are -- free samples. But that's NOT what worries the RIAA cartel:
They're worried about losing control of the distribution channel. After all, if any band can distribute their stuff thru MP3s (as their advertising) and small-run CDs sold off their own website, who the hell needs the RIAA cartel? And there goes the cartel's cut of the profits. (Er, their near-100% of the profits.)
Depends on what you're doing with it, and where you're coming from. I don't know TeX myself, but from what I've heard, it makes programmers very happy, and frustrates hell out of everyone else.
;)
WP's keyboard controls are grouped by function, and you only really need to know the root function -- the prompts will guide you beyond that. I never had any trouble with them. Conversely Wordstar's kb shortcuts (which Windows largely inherited) refused to stick in my head. That's probably why I still use the keyboard commands in WPDOS, but the mouse and menubar in Windows.
Speaking of math, WP5.1 catered to math types too -- it had a really good equation editor (it was used to typeset several advanced math textbooks). And remember it has those extended character sets, too (about 1200 special characters available).
Disclaimer rebuttal: emacs is an invention of the devil.
Parent has a point, but as I point out in another post, there were other factors, largely that WPCorp's owner hated Windows.
Goes to show what OS bigotry will do for your company... there are slashdotters who should be paying close attention to that statement.
That's what some of us have been railing at Novell about for years -- businesses GROW. The business that uses one server and two workstations now, in a few years might need 50 servers and 500 workstations. And it's easier to add to an existing network than it is to shift everything to a whole different setup. So don't be trying to suck everything out of 'em on first contact, by only selling 10-lic. packs -- let 'em grow at their own pace, into a partnership that benefits everyone.
If I were Novell's marketing dept, I'd do this:
Give away one copy of the server OS, plus 3 workstation licenses. (Essentially the same CD they've handed out at Netware upgrade launches for years; sometimes timebombed, sometimes not. But should be unlimited use for this purpose.) Let small business get used to it and entrenched in it. Sell 'em subsequent server and single workstation licences whenever they need one (even if it IS just *one*). DON'T discourage folk from adding to their network as they grow!
BTW good luck with your Damn Good Stuff!