There are similar problems with, for instance, people who build incredibly high-end computers but don't have a DVD-ROM drive.
Still, while I don't really know how much bandwidth is required to keep Steam up to date, I do know that it can (in theory) be run in "offline mode", only forcing you to dialup occasionally (once a week, maybe).
Interesting, but this is all becoming less and less of an issue.
No, not you, person who just got Slashdot to answer your question. I'm talking about anyone else who wants to backup, but doesn't have the technical skill to.
I'm obviously a bit biased -- I get paid to do this. But here's why I'd recommend this anyway: First, you need backup, unless you're willing to lose everything. Second, you want to be sure your backup solution works, and fits your needs well. You don't want to be burning tons of DVDs worth of music, movies, and games unless you're really sure that's what you want -- and even if it is, you don't want to be burning the same ones every time. You either want an automated OS install with everything you want on it, or you want a disk image, probably both. You want offsite, incremental backup. You want all of that, as cheaply as is reasonable.
So talk to an expert. Set a budget, first (initial and ongoing costs), then tell them your wants/needs. Go over some suggestions with them. And most importantly, once they set it up, you do what they say. If they tell you to run a manual backup every week, do so religiously -- hell, do it after you get home from Church, if it helps you remember. But do it, otherwise it's a worthless solution.
That's generally how I'd approach any problem with a computer -- ask an expert. Sometimes you can figure things out on your own, but backup is too important to do that way. You could be doing something stupid and not know it. A trivial example -- the Penny Arcade guys were doing a backup on a USB keychain -- or maybe it was an external hard drive -- except that they weren't using it as a backup, they were using it as their primary storage, so when the backup died, so did their data.
Oh, and by "expert", I don't mean "overpriced overcertified warm body". I mean someone who knows more about this than you do. At the very least, two of you will be smarter than one.
Why is it you think you're safer from rootkits by using a video driver (which goes in your kernel) than using a browser plugin? I suspect you simply have different requirements.
Anyone want to run the math on that? How much does it cost to run a ferry? How long does the bridge have to last without any kind of serious[ly expensive] problems to pay for itself? How have similar bridges lasted?
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickely addicted.
Wrong. You can have good, powerful people, although it's rare. There are fairly uncorruptible people.
Here's a quote from Dune that said it best, I think:
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickely addicted.
I generally check my email at least once a day, probably several times. I can use the distraction.
It's extremely odd. As a programmer, distractions make me more productive, so long as they aren't actually interruptions. In Deep Hack Mode (TM), I won't be interrupted at all, so I simply won't check my mail. But most of the time, going to lunch, going for a walk, putting my feet up on my desk, or reading Slashdot will make me more productive, because it makes me think about something else.
Counterintuitive, but it works, because when I come back to what I was stuck on, I see it in a new way. It's almost as if the less I work, the better I work.
Of course, a significant amount of my time is spent doing more of a grind -- fix this bug, tweak this margin, look up that CSS property, go back to a co-worker and explain a fix I need. I can do that for days at a time. But when I'm actually doing what I'm good at, the programming work itself, that's when breaks make me productive.
However, even if this were not the case, I doubt I'd put it off for more than a few days. Unless I'm really that busy, I see no reason to. If it can reasonably be done over email, it makes sense that way, and when it can't, I pick up the phone or I walk into someone's office. I don't often see flamewars, and I don't try to formulate the perfect email -- I type in a normal conversational style.
I guess I separate interactivity from urgentness. For instance, if a server goes down and I'm needed to put out fires, a simple email, IM, SMS, phone call, or absolutely any way of getting the message "COME TO WORK" to me is fine. Another example: Discussing requirements with a client must always be done in person, but isn't necessarily urgent -- that meeting could be set up five days from now.
But that's just what's worked for me. I can understand people crafting the perfect email, or avoiding email for various reasons -- it doesn't have to make sense to me. It's probably the same sort of psychology which causes people to have rules about never taking work home, and having a place of work and a place of play that are distinct and separate -- the same psychology which suggests that you shouldn't do anything in bed other than sleep or sex.
You seem to be advising against copy'n'paste, so it would seem you agree with me here. And personally, I prefer a quick evolutionary process. Code, unit test, fix, so that it's correct, and stays correct, while you work on something else. The cycle I hate is code the whole thing, then spend the last month or two testing and fixing bugs, at least until managers deliberately ship the (still) buggy code.
As you already pointed out, with enough time and money, one could gather enough evidence to do just that.
Prohibitively expensive, for all intents and purposes, can mean theoretically impossible. No one will ever organize the kind of resources needed to hunt down one conspiracy theories, when ten others will spring up in their place, at least one saying the "proof" comes from an untrustworthy source.
Kind of like how, without a working quantum computer, there is no known way to beat RSA, because even if we somehow managed to gather enough resources to crack a 1024-bit or 2048-bit key, I can just up it again to 4096-bit, and it will now take you all of the matter in the universe until the heat-death of the universe to crack it.
Disproving conspiracy theories is much the same -- in theory, you could, so philosophically it's different than a god, but in practice, not really, and it also makes it difficult to say, with any real conviction, "There are no aliens, or they've never been to Earth."
Rumbling and such, maybe not as impressive, although it'd be a bit different if it's happening to you. But I think the smiting every other bad person bit would be pretty scary, god or not!
They don't have to suppress facts, they just have to ridicule anyone who questions the official version of the truth -- which is how they deal with UFO sightings. Whether or not they are true, you have to admit, if UFOs were real and the government was hiding them, we would "know" just as much about them as we do now.
Also, your RSA example does help -- how much later? And certainly with modern tech, you often see good fields unexplored because they aren't yet seen as practical. A good example here is programming techniques -- there are some known good ones, yet the copy'n'paste, code-test-fix cycle is still under heavy use.
Let's try that, then. Disprove for me, if you will, that an alien craft landed at Area 51 and is now being held in a secure location...
Maybe it's a silly idea, but it's pretty much impossible to disprove. If it's specific enough to disprove, they can still change the theory to match new facts.
Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. However, the one I was bringing up, specifically about quantum computers existing now and being used to crack encryption, cannot practically be disproved, as that would require turning over every single bit of government beaurocracy, gaining all classified access, spending years sifting through it, and eventually saying to yourself "Well of course it wouldn't be in any of these records, no one else in the government knows it exists!"
The rather large difference is, it's generally accepted that conspiracy theories can be proven, if true, whereas even if God spoke in a deep, rumbling voice from the heavens and shook the Earth and smote every other bad person, there would be skeptics and atheists -- how do we know this God is the "real" one, and not just a human with superior technology?
Read up on monopolistic competition. That's essentially what we have now. There is very real competition from sites like mindawn and magnatune, and even between top artists, you have a choice which one to buy. For a given song, yes, there's a monopoly, but how picky are we about our music, really?
Certainly, if you're arguing that the government should sponsor the artists, we can't be that picky. The current model means that music nobody likes won't be funded -- government isn't nearly as efficient as any kind of market, free or not so much.
And if we're not that picky, then Metallica can only raise their prices for so long before metalheads will start turning to Sevendust, Mudvayne, or Slipknot, assuming those prices are different.
While I realize there are some people who argue the way you do, I don't want to complicate the matter by letting **AA astroturf use your argument as a strawman to argue in favor of DRM. It is possible to have the current model work without DRM -- in fact, it's probably not possible for the current model to work with DRM.
It could be much simpler than that today, though -- just find a fairly isolated terrorist cell and bust them. The Patriot Act lets you do it without telling the public why, and the rest of the network never knows how they were caught.
Still, the Cryptonomicon point is a valid one. Even with an elaborate scheme like yours, you still can't be 100% accurate, and every day you have to decide: Do we let this one pass, so they don't get too suspicious, and so we can do more good later, or do we nail them now, so we're not sacrificing real lives now to possibly save more lives later?
Anyway...
I suspect your theory about conspiracy theories is flawed, in that any half-decent conspiracy theory isn't easily provable as a fantasy. It doesn't mean one should believe them, either -- like God, they are often inherently not scientific hypotheses, because they can't be disproved. For one thing, the fact that we could crack enigma is, I think, a good example of a real conspiracy that was probably once just a theory.
You're misquoting me. I did not mean to say "No one is arguing DRM is unnecessary." I meant to say "No one is arguing that it's unnecessary to protect the works of content creators." This much is true, and I can see you agree with me -- copyright law fulfills that need to "protect the works of content creators" without DRM. I'm arguing the same thing you are, great-grandparent was just confusing the issue by using something else to describe DRM -- something which we subconsciously translate into DRM and think is bad, but which authors read literally, and think it's good, and forget about which implementation is being used -- DRM or copyright (or both). I'm just trying to clear up that confusion.
As far as I know, you usually need asymmetric encryption to reasonably set up temporary symmetric encryption. And so many systems today are based on RSA, which is what I'm talking about. Basically, it makes SSH no more secure than Telnet.
Paying isn't the only thing that needs to be more convenient, but yes. Tying it to a checking account might work, if you can cosign with an adult. Prepaid cards are another idea.
Slashdot Mirror
If at first you don't succeed, you fail.
What about a tarpit? Or Teergrube, if you prefer?
There are similar problems with, for instance, people who build incredibly high-end computers but don't have a DVD-ROM drive.
Still, while I don't really know how much bandwidth is required to keep Steam up to date, I do know that it can (in theory) be run in "offline mode", only forcing you to dialup occasionally (once a week, maybe).
Interesting, but this is all becoming less and less of an issue.
No, not you, person who just got Slashdot to answer your question. I'm talking about anyone else who wants to backup, but doesn't have the technical skill to.
I'm obviously a bit biased -- I get paid to do this. But here's why I'd recommend this anyway: First, you need backup, unless you're willing to lose everything. Second, you want to be sure your backup solution works, and fits your needs well. You don't want to be burning tons of DVDs worth of music, movies, and games unless you're really sure that's what you want -- and even if it is, you don't want to be burning the same ones every time. You either want an automated OS install with everything you want on it, or you want a disk image, probably both. You want offsite, incremental backup. You want all of that, as cheaply as is reasonable.
So talk to an expert. Set a budget, first (initial and ongoing costs), then tell them your wants/needs. Go over some suggestions with them. And most importantly, once they set it up, you do what they say. If they tell you to run a manual backup every week, do so religiously -- hell, do it after you get home from Church, if it helps you remember. But do it, otherwise it's a worthless solution.
That's generally how I'd approach any problem with a computer -- ask an expert. Sometimes you can figure things out on your own, but backup is too important to do that way. You could be doing something stupid and not know it. A trivial example -- the Penny Arcade guys were doing a backup on a USB keychain -- or maybe it was an external hard drive -- except that they weren't using it as a backup, they were using it as their primary storage, so when the backup died, so did their data.
Oh, and by "expert", I don't mean "overpriced overcertified warm body". I mean someone who knows more about this than you do. At the very least, two of you will be smarter than one.
Why is it you think you're safer from rootkits by using a video driver (which goes in your kernel) than using a browser plugin? I suspect you simply have different requirements.
Porn is better than men. But I'm not gay, so YMMV.
Question, though: What does it make me if I put PPC-Linux on my Powerbook?
In Soviet Britain, it's illegal for God to masturbate to the sick images of you killing a kitten!
Last I checked, murder itself is illegal, but video of murder is not. Furthermore, this kind of thing is often done with actors.
Anyone want to run the math on that? How much does it cost to run a ferry? How long does the bridge have to last without any kind of serious[ly expensive] problems to pay for itself? How have similar bridges lasted?
I have never known a man who didn't make similar comments about his wife.
I have also never known a man who has lost his wife and didn't grieve.
This is a direct quote from Chapterhouse Dune.
Wrong. You can have good, powerful people, although it's rare. There are fairly uncorruptible people.
Here's a quote from Dune that said it best, I think:
I generally check my email at least once a day, probably several times. I can use the distraction.
It's extremely odd. As a programmer, distractions make me more productive, so long as they aren't actually interruptions. In Deep Hack Mode (TM), I won't be interrupted at all, so I simply won't check my mail. But most of the time, going to lunch, going for a walk, putting my feet up on my desk, or reading Slashdot will make me more productive, because it makes me think about something else.
Counterintuitive, but it works, because when I come back to what I was stuck on, I see it in a new way. It's almost as if the less I work, the better I work.
Of course, a significant amount of my time is spent doing more of a grind -- fix this bug, tweak this margin, look up that CSS property, go back to a co-worker and explain a fix I need. I can do that for days at a time. But when I'm actually doing what I'm good at, the programming work itself, that's when breaks make me productive.
However, even if this were not the case, I doubt I'd put it off for more than a few days. Unless I'm really that busy, I see no reason to. If it can reasonably be done over email, it makes sense that way, and when it can't, I pick up the phone or I walk into someone's office. I don't often see flamewars, and I don't try to formulate the perfect email -- I type in a normal conversational style.
I guess I separate interactivity from urgentness. For instance, if a server goes down and I'm needed to put out fires, a simple email, IM, SMS, phone call, or absolutely any way of getting the message "COME TO WORK" to me is fine. Another example: Discussing requirements with a client must always be done in person, but isn't necessarily urgent -- that meeting could be set up five days from now.
But that's just what's worked for me. I can understand people crafting the perfect email, or avoiding email for various reasons -- it doesn't have to make sense to me. It's probably the same sort of psychology which causes people to have rules about never taking work home, and having a place of work and a place of play that are distinct and separate -- the same psychology which suggests that you shouldn't do anything in bed other than sleep or sex.
You seem to be advising against copy'n'paste, so it would seem you agree with me here. And personally, I prefer a quick evolutionary process. Code, unit test, fix, so that it's correct, and stays correct, while you work on something else. The cycle I hate is code the whole thing, then spend the last month or two testing and fixing bugs, at least until managers deliberately ship the (still) buggy code.
Prohibitively expensive, for all intents and purposes, can mean theoretically impossible. No one will ever organize the kind of resources needed to hunt down one conspiracy theories, when ten others will spring up in their place, at least one saying the "proof" comes from an untrustworthy source.
Kind of like how, without a working quantum computer, there is no known way to beat RSA, because even if we somehow managed to gather enough resources to crack a 1024-bit or 2048-bit key, I can just up it again to 4096-bit, and it will now take you all of the matter in the universe until the heat-death of the universe to crack it.
Disproving conspiracy theories is much the same -- in theory, you could, so philosophically it's different than a god, but in practice, not really, and it also makes it difficult to say, with any real conviction, "There are no aliens, or they've never been to Earth."
Rumbling and such, maybe not as impressive, although it'd be a bit different if it's happening to you. But I think the smiting every other bad person bit would be pretty scary, god or not!
They don't have to suppress facts, they just have to ridicule anyone who questions the official version of the truth -- which is how they deal with UFO sightings. Whether or not they are true, you have to admit, if UFOs were real and the government was hiding them, we would "know" just as much about them as we do now.
Also, your RSA example does help -- how much later? And certainly with modern tech, you often see good fields unexplored because they aren't yet seen as practical. A good example here is programming techniques -- there are some known good ones, yet the copy'n'paste, code-test-fix cycle is still under heavy use.
Interesting points, though.
Let's try that, then. Disprove for me, if you will, that an alien craft landed at Area 51 and is now being held in a secure location...
Maybe it's a silly idea, but it's pretty much impossible to disprove. If it's specific enough to disprove, they can still change the theory to match new facts.
Not all conspiracy theories are created equal. However, the one I was bringing up, specifically about quantum computers existing now and being used to crack encryption, cannot practically be disproved, as that would require turning over every single bit of government beaurocracy, gaining all classified access, spending years sifting through it, and eventually saying to yourself "Well of course it wouldn't be in any of these records, no one else in the government knows it exists!"
The rather large difference is, it's generally accepted that conspiracy theories can be proven, if true, whereas even if God spoke in a deep, rumbling voice from the heavens and shook the Earth and smote every other bad person, there would be skeptics and atheists -- how do we know this God is the "real" one, and not just a human with superior technology?
Read up on monopolistic competition. That's essentially what we have now. There is very real competition from sites like mindawn and magnatune, and even between top artists, you have a choice which one to buy. For a given song, yes, there's a monopoly, but how picky are we about our music, really?
Certainly, if you're arguing that the government should sponsor the artists, we can't be that picky. The current model means that music nobody likes won't be funded -- government isn't nearly as efficient as any kind of market, free or not so much.
And if we're not that picky, then Metallica can only raise their prices for so long before metalheads will start turning to Sevendust, Mudvayne, or Slipknot, assuming those prices are different.
While I realize there are some people who argue the way you do, I don't want to complicate the matter by letting **AA astroturf use your argument as a strawman to argue in favor of DRM. It is possible to have the current model work without DRM -- in fact, it's probably not possible for the current model to work with DRM.
What I mentioned is exactly the business model of this AOL service, regardless of the track record.
I don't mean to be a pedant, but that was in direct reply to my comment on quantum computing, so it would seem to be a valid bit of pedantry.
It could be much simpler than that today, though -- just find a fairly isolated terrorist cell and bust them. The Patriot Act lets you do it without telling the public why, and the rest of the network never knows how they were caught.
Still, the Cryptonomicon point is a valid one. Even with an elaborate scheme like yours, you still can't be 100% accurate, and every day you have to decide: Do we let this one pass, so they don't get too suspicious, and so we can do more good later, or do we nail them now, so we're not sacrificing real lives now to possibly save more lives later?
Anyway...
I suspect your theory about conspiracy theories is flawed, in that any half-decent conspiracy theory isn't easily provable as a fantasy. It doesn't mean one should believe them, either -- like God, they are often inherently not scientific hypotheses, because they can't be disproved. For one thing, the fact that we could crack enigma is, I think, a good example of a real conspiracy that was probably once just a theory.
You're misquoting me. I did not mean to say "No one is arguing DRM is unnecessary." I meant to say "No one is arguing that it's unnecessary to protect the works of content creators." This much is true, and I can see you agree with me -- copyright law fulfills that need to "protect the works of content creators" without DRM. I'm arguing the same thing you are, great-grandparent was just confusing the issue by using something else to describe DRM -- something which we subconsciously translate into DRM and think is bad, but which authors read literally, and think it's good, and forget about which implementation is being used -- DRM or copyright (or both). I'm just trying to clear up that confusion.
As far as I know, you usually need asymmetric encryption to reasonably set up temporary symmetric encryption. And so many systems today are based on RSA, which is what I'm talking about. Basically, it makes SSH no more secure than Telnet.
Can't find any, sorry. I think this is something my high school physics teacher told me.
Paying isn't the only thing that needs to be more convenient, but yes. Tying it to a checking account might work, if you can cosign with an adult. Prepaid cards are another idea.