The Random Comic Strip

The Random Comic Strip

Words to live by...

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and to rest afterward."

[Spanish Proverb]

Ius luxuriae publice datum est

(The right to looseness has been officially given)

"Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders," wrote Ludwig von Mises, "no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. Therefore everyone, in his own interest, must thrust himself vigorously into the intellectual battle."

Apparently, the crossword puzzle that disappeared from the blog, came back.


Monday, October 12, 2009

Let Me Back Up a Bit

The big story today is about Microsoft subsidiary Danger losing all T-Mobile Sidekick customer data from their servers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101100109.html

While I sit and ponder the loss of data on a vast scale and wonder just what that means, I also get that nagging feeling that I have not done enough to protect my own data. I suppose it is only natural to have such stories trigger such emotions but I try so hard not to be just another human being. And often disappoint myself.

We all have stories of loss of data at some point in our technological lives. When Faye's hard drive bit the dust very unexpectedly a decade or so ago, it cost us big time to recover the data from it. More than the cost of 2 new large (at the time) hard drives. It taught us a lesson... Important stuff has to be backed up in the Real World also. It is not yet a paperless world.

I had already been backing up various things we stored on our computers but it was haphazard. Mostly just the main programming and not on a regular basis. An annoying chore I often put off.

I am one who has journeyed through the transition from the time when micro-film was cutting edge to Cloud computing's emergence. While it didn't make a cynic of me (I was born one or born to be one, I am unsure) it did nothing to dissuade me from that path.

In the late 60's, Ma Bell looked out upon the digital landscape and murmured "We should do that". She was already moving toward electronic switching systems and away from the old electro-mechanical stuff. Instead of clanking, whirring, humming, clacking mechanical devices connecting and carrying analog sound waves amplified by electricity, all sound would be encoded into bits of digital data and eventually into impulses of light (and across that spectrum) quietly and efficiently sent across the world.

I was a part of that. A small part, mind you, just another cog in the great machine. A rather unimportant one. But one who found a new task at work. Backing up data. We had not really done that before. Oh, we kept multiple copies of customer records but nothing like this. Boxes of daily paper printouts, weekly magnetic tape backups, duplicates of each. We now kept records of what our switching machines were doing.

This is the true legacy of the digital transition. Repetitive redundancy. The world of data had now become more fragile. I am wondering if the first scribes were ordered to make copies of the clay tablets they etched of the king's edicts.

12 comments:

Bagman and Butler said...

I once thought about writing a science fiction book where the earth passes through some odd galactic field that wipes every single piece of computer data off the face of the earth. Except for cash on hand, money disappears. Cars and planes don't run. The entire concept of power in the world shifts totally. What then?

Steven said...

I scan all my important (and not-so-important) documents using a Fujitsu ScanSnap (put a stack of papers in, push the one button on the front). They're archived into a PDF that is an exact copy of the document for printing out later if anybody needs a paper copy, and OCR'd with invisible background text for instant searching through MAC OS X's Spotlight. Every hour my whole machine is backed up to an external eSATA hard drive with OS X's Time Machine backup program. Every 4 hours my most important documents / all my photos & home movies are backed up to Amazon's cloud storage using JungleDisk in case of a devastating fire - the cost of $7 - $10 a month is nothing compared to the peace of mind.

The originals are usually shredded. The only papers I keep the original of (passports, birth certificates, wedding certificate) are scanned and then kept in a fireproof safe, and that's the stuff I'm most worried about.

Gold is kept in the bank safety deposit box.

Most places I deal with will accept the PDFs over email, as it's no different from faxing them a copy (mortgage was done by PDF, car loan was mostly done online).

My bank pays most of my bills electronically, but it will mail checks for a few places, at no cost to me.

I scan and file all rebates I send in, since in the past I've had one lost and been asked for a copy which I didn't have. That won't happen again.

Healthcare bills and state/local/car taxes are scanned to a yearly folder for claiming every April. I file completely electronically, and my filings are archived locally and externally in the same manner as everything else important.

My 4+ terabyte collection of media is currently not safe, about to buy a Drobo hard drive array that transparently handles hard drive failures with checksum redudancy...but that's not the highest priority.

I do have to mail in out-of-network health claims. Really annoys me.

We may not be completely paperless yet, but some of us are pretty close. It makes older generations nervous, but my documents are much safer than a filing cabinet in my parents' basement.

Steven said...

Ha! I just submitted OON health claims online. My victory for the day.

Douglas said...

B&B, that would be an interesting premise to follow through on. You should do it. I wonder if a reversal of the earth's magnetic poles, aside from the obvious other havoc, might do to stored data?

Steven, you're young. Computers in the home have been around as long as you have. The rest of us old fogies are not there yet.

The Jules said...

Clay tablets were the original hard drives.

edwin sanchez said...

I never liked the Sidekick anyway, I was always a Blackberry owner...very faithful...like the rest of the world.

Steven said...

Yeah, thankfully

chris brown said...

I think that they did a great job at first but now they really need to get it together.

chris brown said...

I think that they did a great job at first but now they really need to get it together.

The Jules said...

Clay tablets were the original hard drives.

edwin sanchez said...

I never liked the Sidekick anyway, I was always a Blackberry owner...very faithful...like the rest of the world.

Steven said...

Yeah, thankfully