Hell, ask Marc Emery. Sold pot seeds in Canada where it is legal to do so (even to the point that the Canadian government directed medical marijuana patients to him). Some went across the border, the DEA didn't like that, and they pressured the Canadians in to arresting and extraditing one of their own citizens for doing something that wasn't a crime there.
Really shows how fucked our "justice" system can be (and how weak-willed the Canadian authorities apparently are).
I did read that, but it only makes sense for a subset of those experiencing the problem.
If you have AT&T service in both 850 and 1900 MHz bands, the problems with both reception and transmission caused by the cell antenna being partially shorted by your hand to the other antenna could very well be reduced by switching to the other band. In that case, a baseband bug affecting changes between bands would certainly have an effect.
However, if you only have usable service on one band, typically the 850 band when indoors, you're limited to just channel changing. Unless you're right on the edge of a usable signal, this is unlikely to amount to much.
This is a hardware problem, as when the parts of the band are electrically connected the size of the antenna changes as well as now having two transmitters attached to what is effectively the same antenna. Software can work around some of the problems this causes, but it can't change the fact that you've gone from an antenna that is optimized for the frequencies it transmits on to one that isn't.
I know modern radio platforms have a lot of software flexibility, but the limited knowledge of antennas I've picked up from messing with long-range WiFi and my ham radio experiments tells me this is not something that can be patched out with an OS upgrade.
That is unless the OS upgrade comes with a coupon for a free rubber bumper thingy...
CD and DVD capacities and transfer rates are measured in metric units, and 1.44 "MB" floppies are a combination of one metric and one binary measure (1.44 "MB" * 1024000 bytes/"MB"). Still, 8 bits per byte, so 100 Gb/s is 12.5 GB/s.
Using the correct units, I get:
1 DVD 17 CDs 8477 floppies
Consider a 1.44 "MB" floppy is defined using two different definitions for a kilobyte: a 1000 B/KB and a 1024 B/KiB factor.
Our discrepancies in numbers seem to come from the fact that I did my math lazily using Google Calculator and queries such as "100 gigabits / X bytes". Google uses the binary meaning of 107,374,182,400 bits as the value for 100 gigabits, rather than the SI definition of 100,000,000,000 bits.
In practice though, it is one floppy, one CD, and one DVD across the board, because it takes more than one second to swap each of them. And that's assuming you've pre-cached the first disk to memory since you're not going to find a drive that can read one 3.5" floppy disk that fast, and I doubt a DVD could even survive the RPMs necessary to read it that fast, let alone a CD.
Of course. Just using the capacities of familiar media to put things in perspective for those who may not spend their days maxing out networks.
9102 full 3.5" floppy disks (1.44MB) 18 full CDs (700MB) 1 full DVD (8.54GB)
Every second, with room to spare (I just counted complete transfers).
Of course I'm still waiting on 10g to be affordable for LAN use and barely get 10m to the WAN, so I'm sure the various **AAs aren't afraid of this for now.
Since a given input will always result in the same output, obviously encoding. Encryption requires there to be a secret, be it the key, algorithm, or both. ROT13 has no key and a well known algorithm, therefore no secret and no encryption.
To take this further, if you know it's wireless and you know you didn't have to do anything to connect to it except click, why in the world would you think there is any more challenge for others to connect and see everything you send?
We're comparing people sending out unencrypted infra-red e-m waves while behind their own walls to people sending out unencrypted microwave e-m waves while behind their own walls. Unless wavelength is philosophically important in your argument, I'd say the analogy is fairly sound.
It is important, again going back to the expectation of privacy. Yes we're all both broadcasting and reflecting EM radiation in a range roughly centered on visible light, but we also have an expectation that when we're behind solid walls that we can't be seen which correctly or incorrectly has been built up in our societies over thousands of years.
Courts and lawmakers have (appropriately, in my view) taken the position that this expectation of privacy should extend to the infrared spectrum, thus why police infrared scanning programs looking for drug grows have been smacked down fairly hard.
On the other hand no one in the entire time we've been capable of controlled transmissions in the radio spectrum has had any reason to believe, nor should they, that transmissions from an omnidirectional antenna would be private unless scrambled or encrypted.
In what rational way can a transmission be of "legally sufficient" format for no-one to be allowed to snoop? This sounds like a daft DMCA-style confounding of social and technical problems. My reasonable expectation is that you don't follow me around surreptitiously recording everything I've said and then using it for personal gain, and, depending on your jurisdiction (the US included when it comes to certain radio transmissions), the law is in agreement.
Now I'd be a little naive to expect no-one to idly listen to something I'm transmitting in the the clear, and the law would be draconian to make it illegal to hear me. But hearing data and wilfully processing data for personal gain are completely different things. The UK (and EU) Data Protection Acts seem to understand this very well and speak of various rights and responsibilities in terms of how data can be "processed", not whether it can be "heard".
What I meant by legally sufficient is that regardless of how well a method of scrambling or encryption actually works at protecting your communications, the fact that you are using it makes it clear the communication was intended to be private, thus intercepting that without legal authority would be a crime.
If I put up an open WiFi AP and someone within range of it monitors the traffic, that's my problem since I am broadcasting that traffic wide open. Again going back to the FRS/GMRS/CB analogy, anyone else can tune in to the same channel and see/hear everything I'm sending and there's nothing wrong with that because I have no expectation of privacy.
If I turn on WEP on my AP, I know it's still pretty much just as vulnerable, but if someone is monitoring and decrypting the transmissions they are now actively engaging in an invasion of privacy since they would have had to defeat the (admittedly weak) security measure to access it.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the thing with the antenna is a radio. This isn't CS degree territory, it's if you don't realize it's your own goddamn fault territory. There is a point where you have to expect people to understand that wireless means radio.
That is an entirely stupid analogy, since people have obvious reasons to expect privacy when behind their own walls. On the other hand, no one broadcasting unscrambled and unencrypted radio has any reason to expect privacy.
If I pick up my FRS radio and start talking to a friend on it, should I have any expectation that no one else is listening? Of course not. It's an open system transmitting in the clear for which transceivers are available at pretty much every store with an electronics section. How is WiFi any different? If you want privacy, even WEP is enough to be legally sufficient (though of course you'd want to use WPA if your goal is to keep the information private rather than just being able to prosecute for accessing it).
Should it be illegal? I have to disagree with you there. It should be completely illegal to do such in private residential areas.
Why? When you're broadcasting an unencrypted radio signal you have absolutely zero expectation of privacy for communications over that channel. I believe that this was a bad idea for Google, but only because of reactions like this being inevitable. Driving around capturing any unencrypted WiFi packets is exactly the same as if I was to press the "scan" button on my FRS/GMRS radio and drive around listening to random people talk. They're on an open, unprotected channel, there's nothing wrong with listening to them nor should there be a law against it. If you want your communications to be private you either use encryption or use a wire.
I can say for certain that AT&T has a history of grandfathering plans that are no longer available even when out of contract. Until I canceled it last year due to lack of use and a tight budget, I had a truly unlimited data plan with tethering supported on my line. No 5GB cap like the tethering plans offered up until recently, I could and did pull over 25GB over it more than once with no overages. I could use that plan officially with any phone other than the iPhone, and until they started looking for iPhone IMEIs I could unofficially use it with them by just swapping my SIM over.
They, like Sprint and I believe Verizon, occasionally make certain data plans mandatory for new phones but history has shown that they don't lie about grandfathering. I'd bet they realize the inevitable class action would cost more than just letting a slowly diminishing class of grandfathered users keep what they have.
If he's on AT&T and bought his iPhone before June 7, he's unlimited. If he bought it after June 7, he's a moron because we knew about the iPhone 4 at that point.
He was most likely thinking of pagers, which are unencrypted and require no special equipment to monitor. If you have a radio receiver which can tune the appropriate frequencies (many ham radios and scanners readily available at retail stores) and a computer you can decode any pager messages sent on towers you can "hear".
That said, how are you making a logical leap from something being broadcast unencrypted over the air to opening mail? The snail-mail equivalent would be if a postcard was mailed to everyone in a zip code with instructions on the front saying for only John Doe at 123 Main Street to flip it over and read the back. Any expectation of privacy when using standard radio communications in the clear is absurd.
IANAL, but that would probably mean they would have no rights to examine the device itself, but any records available through the telco would still be fair game.
That and as posted above who uses their phone from 12 inches? Set on my desk, my phone's about 16-18 inches from my eyes. I'm 6 foot even, so I assume that's about normal for adult males. Held at my waist as I and many others do when on the go, it's more in the 24" range. At those distances the resolution is quite easily sufficient.
The data corruption "bug" only showed itself if you were doing things WHS wasn't originally designed for (running local downloader apps pointed at the storage pool). In the original release, the storage pool was intended for remote use only, so when people installed programs like SABnzbd or their favorite Bittorrent app on their WHS box they often found the download corrupted.
It didn't randomly corrupt anything loaded through the proper method and it has been fixed for over a year now, so it's a non-issue.
I forget who, but after seeing the FSF GPL FAQ links posted by the other replier and others, obviously I'll default to the position of those who wrote the license. I still stand that one way or another it would be mostly a moot point, as I doubt many people would take their employer to court over being refused access to the source of an internal application.
1. The code you wrote is probably your employer's. 2. The rest (the GPL code you used) is not.
This means that to distribute the code you wrote they would need to abide by the terms of the GPL or rewrite all of the GPL parts. I've heard solid arguments in both directions as to whether internal corporate use counts as distribution, but when talking internal only it may be a moot point if none of the other users care to request the source.
If binaries are being distributed outside your organization without the offer of source and such, it's a clear cut violation.
Using your own device in whatever manner you wish is your right!
And you can. Jailbreaking takes one single click. Putting whatever content you want on Apple's App Store is not your right, it's Apple's right to have whatever arbitrary restrictions they want.
Not defending their often stupid policies, but it is their store and they can choose to offer only the programs they want to.
Perhaps, in America. But civilised countries have systems of taxpayer-funded legal aid for those unable to mount their own defence, or have strict rules about misuse of court process. This kind of tomfoolery simply doesn't happen in the UK, for example; the most recent attempt being some chiropractors who tried to sue a British science journalist for proving their profession was bunkum. The chiropractors suffered the judicial equivalent of having flaming oil poured over them.
Actually the British libel laws were and still are fairly far in favor of those like the British Chiropractic Association. The case was dropped when Simon won his appeal over an earlier judgment that was going to force him to defend an interpretation of his words which any sane person would see wasn't what he meant. He would have been doomed had that appeal not gone his way, and even with the win it was still more of a 50/50 shot under British law (from my understanding as an American having loosely followed this case). The BCA apparently decided to give up once it wasn't a slam dunk for them anymore, but Simon is still out over 100,000 pounds in legal costs (though he is trying to recover some of that).
In civilized countries, the burden of proof for libel lies on the one supposedly being libeled. In Britain, the writer of the supposed libel is guilty until proven innocent.
"In the "which is easiest to prevent data loss" wars, digital wins hands down."
Not when your camera is storing those shots as JPG. You've just introduced loss before you've even made your first copy.
And is that really a relevant point when discussing a medium format back for a really fucking expensive camera? I think it's a safe bet that everything done with these things is being originally stored in raw format as dumped from the sensor.
For archival, there is no beating digital. Analog copies will always have flaws where digital copies are theoretically perfect assuming nothing went wrong in the process. Even if something did go wrong, that can be verified and accounted for by copying the damaged portion again.
I have a home server and a rented server with ISP-hosted backup. If I take a photo that I find important, I can drop it in a folder on my laptop that is regularly rsynced to my home server. Within 15 minutes as long as I'm at home it's now stored on at least three hard drives (laptop + RAID1 in the server), plus possibly still the flash memory used in the camera. If I think it's really important (usually reserved for financial data and work), I can put in in a subfolder that my home server automatically rsyncs hourly with my remote rented server. Now it's on four hard drives and one flash device in four different machines and located in two different states entirely. Tonight the server will back up the "really important" directory to the ISP-provided space. Now it's on four hard drives, a flash drive, and a SAN.
While what I do is complicated, it is possible to use tools like Dropbox and Mozy among others to deliver the same functionality in a form more usable to the average person.
Thanks to digital, as long as I am responsible with where I store my files it is practically impossible for anything to be lost. If I had taken them on film, I would have exactly one "original" grade copy and that's it. If the negative is lost, it's gone and there's no getting it back.
Assuming sufficient capture quality, digital always beats analog.
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Hell, ask Marc Emery. Sold pot seeds in Canada where it is legal to do so (even to the point that the Canadian government directed medical marijuana patients to him). Some went across the border, the DEA didn't like that, and they pressured the Canadians in to arresting and extraditing one of their own citizens for doing something that wasn't a crime there.
Really shows how fucked our "justice" system can be (and how weak-willed the Canadian authorities apparently are).
They have now been fixed. Originally all pointed to the one now linked as #2.
The second and third links both point to the same URL as the first.
I did read that, but it only makes sense for a subset of those experiencing the problem.
If you have AT&T service in both 850 and 1900 MHz bands, the problems with both reception and transmission caused by the cell antenna being partially shorted by your hand to the other antenna could very well be reduced by switching to the other band. In that case, a baseband bug affecting changes between bands would certainly have an effect.
However, if you only have usable service on one band, typically the 850 band when indoors, you're limited to just channel changing. Unless you're right on the edge of a usable signal, this is unlikely to amount to much.
This is a hardware problem, as when the parts of the band are electrically connected the size of the antenna changes as well as now having two transmitters attached to what is effectively the same antenna. Software can work around some of the problems this causes, but it can't change the fact that you've gone from an antenna that is optimized for the frequencies it transmits on to one that isn't.
I know modern radio platforms have a lot of software flexibility, but the limited knowledge of antennas I've picked up from messing with long-range WiFi and my ham radio experiments tells me this is not something that can be patched out with an OS upgrade.
That is unless the OS upgrade comes with a coupon for a free rubber bumper thingy...
CD and DVD capacities and transfer rates are measured in metric units, and 1.44 "MB" floppies are a combination of one metric and one binary measure (1.44 "MB" * 1024000 bytes/"MB"). Still, 8 bits per byte, so 100 Gb/s is 12.5 GB/s.
Using the correct units, I get:
1 DVD
17 CDs
8477 floppies
Consider a 1.44 "MB" floppy is defined using two different definitions for a kilobyte: a 1000 B/KB and a 1024 B/KiB factor.
(1.44 "MB"/floppy * 1024000 bytes/"MB" == 1474560 B/floppy; / 1,000,000,000 bytes/GB == .00147456 GB/floppy; 100 Gb/s * 1B/8b == 12.5 GB/s; 12.5 GB/s / .00147456 GB/floppy > 8477 floppies/sec).
I used the following capacities in my calculations:
3.5" Floppy: 1,474,560 bytes (11,796,480 bits)
80 minute CD-R: 360,000 sectors at 2,048 bytes each (Mode 1) = 737,280,000 bytes (5,898,240,000 bits)
DVD+R DL: 4,173,824 sectors at 2,048 bytes = 8,547,991,552 bytes (68,383,932,416 bits)
Our discrepancies in numbers seem to come from the fact that I did my math lazily using Google Calculator and queries such as "100 gigabits / X bytes". Google uses the binary meaning of 107,374,182,400 bits as the value for 100 gigabits, rather than the SI definition of 100,000,000,000 bits.
In practice though, it is one floppy, one CD, and one DVD across the board, because it takes more than one second to swap each of them. And that's assuming you've pre-cached the first disk to memory since you're not going to find a drive that can read one 3.5" floppy disk that fast, and I doubt a DVD could even survive the RPMs necessary to read it that fast, let alone a CD.
Of course. Just using the capacities of familiar media to put things in perspective for those who may not spend their days maxing out networks.
That's:
9102 full 3.5" floppy disks (1.44MB)
18 full CDs (700MB)
1 full DVD (8.54GB)
Every second, with room to spare (I just counted complete transfers).
Of course I'm still waiting on 10g to be affordable for LAN use and barely get 10m to the WAN, so I'm sure the various **AAs aren't afraid of this for now.
Since a given input will always result in the same output, obviously encoding. Encryption requires there to be a secret, be it the key, algorithm, or both. ROT13 has no key and a well known algorithm, therefore no secret and no encryption.
To take this further, if you know it's wireless and you know you didn't have to do anything to connect to it except click, why in the world would you think there is any more challenge for others to connect and see everything you send?
We're comparing people sending out unencrypted infra-red e-m waves while behind their own walls to people sending out unencrypted microwave e-m waves while behind their own walls. Unless wavelength is philosophically important in your argument, I'd say the analogy is fairly sound.
It is important, again going back to the expectation of privacy. Yes we're all both broadcasting and reflecting EM radiation in a range roughly centered on visible light, but we also have an expectation that when we're behind solid walls that we can't be seen which correctly or incorrectly has been built up in our societies over thousands of years.
Courts and lawmakers have (appropriately, in my view) taken the position that this expectation of privacy should extend to the infrared spectrum, thus why police infrared scanning programs looking for drug grows have been smacked down fairly hard.
On the other hand no one in the entire time we've been capable of controlled transmissions in the radio spectrum has had any reason to believe, nor should they, that transmissions from an omnidirectional antenna would be private unless scrambled or encrypted.
In what rational way can a transmission be of "legally sufficient" format for no-one to be allowed to snoop? This sounds like a daft DMCA-style confounding of social and technical problems. My reasonable expectation is that you don't follow me around surreptitiously recording everything I've said and then using it for personal gain, and, depending on your jurisdiction (the US included when it comes to certain radio transmissions), the law is in agreement.
Now I'd be a little naive to expect no-one to idly listen to something I'm transmitting in the the clear, and the law would be draconian to make it illegal to hear me. But hearing data and wilfully processing data for personal gain are completely different things. The UK (and EU) Data Protection Acts seem to understand this very well and speak of various rights and responsibilities in terms of how data can be "processed", not whether it can be "heard".
What I meant by legally sufficient is that regardless of how well a method of scrambling or encryption actually works at protecting your communications, the fact that you are using it makes it clear the communication was intended to be private, thus intercepting that without legal authority would be a crime.
If I put up an open WiFi AP and someone within range of it monitors the traffic, that's my problem since I am broadcasting that traffic wide open. Again going back to the FRS/GMRS/CB analogy, anyone else can tune in to the same channel and see/hear everything I'm sending and there's nothing wrong with that because I have no expectation of privacy.
If I turn on WEP on my AP, I know it's still pretty much just as vulnerable, but if someone is monitoring and decrypting the transmissions they are now actively engaging in an invasion of privacy since they would have had to defeat the (admittedly weak) security measure to access it.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the thing with the antenna is a radio. This isn't CS degree territory, it's if you don't realize it's your own goddamn fault territory. There is a point where you have to expect people to understand that wireless means radio.
That is an entirely stupid analogy, since people have obvious reasons to expect privacy when behind their own walls. On the other hand, no one broadcasting unscrambled and unencrypted radio has any reason to expect privacy.
If I pick up my FRS radio and start talking to a friend on it, should I have any expectation that no one else is listening? Of course not. It's an open system transmitting in the clear for which transceivers are available at pretty much every store with an electronics section. How is WiFi any different? If you want privacy, even WEP is enough to be legally sufficient (though of course you'd want to use WPA if your goal is to keep the information private rather than just being able to prosecute for accessing it).
Should it be illegal? I have to disagree with you there. It should be completely illegal to do such in private residential areas.
Why? When you're broadcasting an unencrypted radio signal you have absolutely zero expectation of privacy for communications over that channel. I believe that this was a bad idea for Google, but only because of reactions like this being inevitable. Driving around capturing any unencrypted WiFi packets is exactly the same as if I was to press the "scan" button on my FRS/GMRS radio and drive around listening to random people talk. They're on an open, unprotected channel, there's nothing wrong with listening to them nor should there be a law against it. If you want your communications to be private you either use encryption or use a wire.
I can say for certain that AT&T has a history of grandfathering plans that are no longer available even when out of contract. Until I canceled it last year due to lack of use and a tight budget, I had a truly unlimited data plan with tethering supported on my line. No 5GB cap like the tethering plans offered up until recently, I could and did pull over 25GB over it more than once with no overages. I could use that plan officially with any phone other than the iPhone, and until they started looking for iPhone IMEIs I could unofficially use it with them by just swapping my SIM over.
They, like Sprint and I believe Verizon, occasionally make certain data plans mandatory for new phones but history has shown that they don't lie about grandfathering. I'd bet they realize the inevitable class action would cost more than just letting a slowly diminishing class of grandfathered users keep what they have.
If he's on AT&T and bought his iPhone before June 7, he's unlimited. If he bought it after June 7, he's a moron because we knew about the iPhone 4 at that point.
He was most likely thinking of pagers, which are unencrypted and require no special equipment to monitor. If you have a radio receiver which can tune the appropriate frequencies (many ham radios and scanners readily available at retail stores) and a computer you can decode any pager messages sent on towers you can "hear".
That said, how are you making a logical leap from something being broadcast unencrypted over the air to opening mail? The snail-mail equivalent would be if a postcard was mailed to everyone in a zip code with instructions on the front saying for only John Doe at 123 Main Street to flip it over and read the back. Any expectation of privacy when using standard radio communications in the clear is absurd.
IANAL, but that would probably mean they would have no rights to examine the device itself, but any records available through the telco would still be fair game.
That and as posted above who uses their phone from 12 inches? Set on my desk, my phone's about 16-18 inches from my eyes. I'm 6 foot even, so I assume that's about normal for adult males. Held at my waist as I and many others do when on the go, it's more in the 24" range. At those distances the resolution is quite easily sufficient.
The data corruption "bug" only showed itself if you were doing things WHS wasn't originally designed for (running local downloader apps pointed at the storage pool). In the original release, the storage pool was intended for remote use only, so when people installed programs like SABnzbd or their favorite Bittorrent app on their WHS box they often found the download corrupted.
It didn't randomly corrupt anything loaded through the proper method and it has been fixed for over a year now, so it's a non-issue.
I forget who, but after seeing the FSF GPL FAQ links posted by the other replier and others, obviously I'll default to the position of those who wrote the license. I still stand that one way or another it would be mostly a moot point, as I doubt many people would take their employer to court over being refused access to the source of an internal application.
Didn't know that. In that case, the whole thing seems pretty open-and-shut.
1. The code you wrote is probably your employer's.
2. The rest (the GPL code you used) is not.
This means that to distribute the code you wrote they would need to abide by the terms of the GPL or rewrite all of the GPL parts. I've heard solid arguments in both directions as to whether internal corporate use counts as distribution, but when talking internal only it may be a moot point if none of the other users care to request the source.
If binaries are being distributed outside your organization without the offer of source and such, it's a clear cut violation.
Using your own device in whatever manner you wish is your right!
And you can. Jailbreaking takes one single click. Putting whatever content you want on Apple's App Store is not your right, it's Apple's right to have whatever arbitrary restrictions they want.
Not defending their often stupid policies, but it is their store and they can choose to offer only the programs they want to.
Perhaps, in America. But civilised countries have systems of taxpayer-funded legal aid for those unable to mount their own defence, or have strict rules about misuse of court process. This kind of tomfoolery simply doesn't happen in the UK, for example; the most recent attempt being some chiropractors who tried to sue a British science journalist for proving their profession was bunkum. The chiropractors suffered the judicial equivalent of having flaming oil poured over them.
Actually the British libel laws were and still are fairly far in favor of those like the British Chiropractic Association. The case was dropped when Simon won his appeal over an earlier judgment that was going to force him to defend an interpretation of his words which any sane person would see wasn't what he meant. He would have been doomed had that appeal not gone his way, and even with the win it was still more of a 50/50 shot under British law (from my understanding as an American having loosely followed this case). The BCA apparently decided to give up once it wasn't a slam dunk for them anymore, but Simon is still out over 100,000 pounds in legal costs (though he is trying to recover some of that).
In civilized countries, the burden of proof for libel lies on the one supposedly being libeled. In Britain, the writer of the supposed libel is guilty until proven innocent.
"In the "which is easiest to prevent data loss" wars, digital wins hands down."
Not when your camera is storing those shots as JPG. You've just introduced loss before you've even made your first copy.
And is that really a relevant point when discussing a medium format back for a really fucking expensive camera? I think it's a safe bet that everything done with these things is being originally stored in raw format as dumped from the sensor.
For archival, there is no beating digital. Analog copies will always have flaws where digital copies are theoretically perfect assuming nothing went wrong in the process. Even if something did go wrong, that can be verified and accounted for by copying the damaged portion again.
I have a home server and a rented server with ISP-hosted backup. If I take a photo that I find important, I can drop it in a folder on my laptop that is regularly rsynced to my home server. Within 15 minutes as long as I'm at home it's now stored on at least three hard drives (laptop + RAID1 in the server), plus possibly still the flash memory used in the camera. If I think it's really important (usually reserved for financial data and work), I can put in in a subfolder that my home server automatically rsyncs hourly with my remote rented server. Now it's on four hard drives and one flash device in four different machines and located in two different states entirely. Tonight the server will back up the "really important" directory to the ISP-provided space. Now it's on four hard drives, a flash drive, and a SAN.
While what I do is complicated, it is possible to use tools like Dropbox and Mozy among others to deliver the same functionality in a form more usable to the average person.
Thanks to digital, as long as I am responsible with where I store my files it is practically impossible for anything to be lost. If I had taken them on film, I would have exactly one "original" grade copy and that's it. If the negative is lost, it's gone and there's no getting it back.
Assuming sufficient capture quality, digital always beats analog.