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Palm Pre Experiencing Big Ol' Backup Failures
Clickfree Traveler External SSD is Credit-Card Sized For Convenience
There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
LG's N4B1 Network NAS Auto-Backs-Up Your Files to Blu-ray Disc
Cucku Social Backup Stores Your Data With Your Friend, Your Friend's Data With You
EZ Dupe Makes Stealing Portable Again
Wii Internet Channel Exploit Found, Homebrew to Come?
How To: One-Click DVD Rips and Backups
Flash That Phonebook, Baby

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Segador
11/24/09

In reply to Palm Pre Experiencing Big Ol' Backup Failures
Slightly off-topic, but there's a fantastic, free program that lets you make swirly smoke-like effect similar to the one in the photo. Can anyone remember what's it's called and/or point me in the right direction?
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USB_Humping_Dog
11/24/09

@Segador: A cigarette?
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Segador
11/24/09

@USB_Humping_Dog: Close, but no cigar.
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OMG! Ponies!
11/24/09

In reply to Palm Pre Experiencing Big Ol' Backup Failures
Official Statement:

We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device. Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device.

Translation:

We aggressively marketed our phone to, among other demographic groups, college students as they have a fair amount of disposable income and access to the Bank of Mom. Naturally, being college kids, the average Palm Pre owner got drunk and promptly broke the phones in what we are certain was a night of regret and burning pain on urination. Unfortunately, while we were somewhat successful in selling the Future Liver Transplant Recipients Of America replacement handsets, it appears that we really bollixed the restore feature. Seriously. There was a pooch and we just screwed the hell out of it. While putting features into the phone is our responsibility, we did not think this would be a problem until later. We have also come to realize that not only do college students have disposable income, they also have blogs and a penchant for whining. So we are trying to fix their shit real quick because neither our stock price nor Sprint's can take a hit. Maybe that will shut those brats up.
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crackel
11/24/09

@OMG! Ponies!: all the while weaving the same old spin-doctor
web of "a small percentage of our population is experiencing..." while, in fact, a much bigger problem exists.
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Gordonium
11/24/09

In reply to Palm Pre Experiencing Big Ol' Backup Failures
Palm Pres are being emo and deciding not to synch/transfer with ANYTHING, since they can't sync with iTunes?

I guess Palm IS 17 years old, now... the prime age for nonsensical emo shenanigans.
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.357
05/07/09

In reply to Clickfree Traveler External SSD is Credit-Card Sized For Convenience
USB? I can't be the only one still using these.

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bosskev
05/07/09

@C63 Went Loco Killed M3 And RS4: Wow! What is that, the successor to Blu-ray? And apparently it can hold TWO full hi-def movies? Very cool!
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ripfire
05/07/09

@bosskev: It even has the capability of Dual OS format.
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Révolution
05/07/09

@bosskev: Sarcasm fail. ^

.................................................|
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Révolution
05/07/09

@Révolution: I need to figure out the ASCII art for this site.
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bosskev
05/07/09

@Révolution: ASCII art fail. ^
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ridgecity
05/07/09

@C63 Went Loco Killed M3 And RS4: Don't you know you are not supposed you use pens on it?? you just ruined about 315KB!
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.357
05/07/09

@ridgecity: Sorry, I was busy working on a new version of Netscape.
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ripfire
05/07/09

In reply to Clickfree Traveler External SSD is Credit-Card Sized For Convenience
Wouldn't it be just another USB drive in a credit card sized package?
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Purple Dave
03/27/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
If your DVDs are going bad in a little over five years, then perhaps you should stop filing them in the sandbox.
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Jesse in Japan
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
For the really important data, you've got to get it tattooed all over your body.
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fuchikoma
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
I've known about this for a while, and I have ten year old CDs that have gone south (and a surprising number that are still ok...) but sadly the technology isn't there to make this feasible yet. I have spools upon spools of DVDs, and I simply can't afford to back them all up and reburn them - financially or time-wise.

Sad, but at least my interests change enough in ten years that MOST of them won't matter that much. Still, it would suck to pull one from the library and find it unreadable!
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Jonny Morris
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
This is a huge problem for government too. Back in the day, to comply with various regulations for achiving govt. publications, it was easy enough to have the GPO print off a few extra copies of any given publication and send it over to the Lib of Congress or the Nat'l Archives (depending on what it was). Now, so many agencies product papers, reports, etc. exclusively in electronic format, it's hard for them to know what exactly to save and how to save it.

I wrote a paper a couple years ago on this. Talking to library scientists and archivists (two of the most action-packed jobs in the world, I imagine), the general consensus is that in 100 years, we'll know more about govt records in the 19th and 20th centuries than our current period.

That isn't stopping the govt, however, from paying millions to contractors like Lockheed from developing proprietary storage for electronic records, along with crawlers to ensure electornic publications from govt website get stored.
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

@Jonny Morris: And don't forget microfilm and microfiche back in the day.
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
I archived my home movies shot on 8mm/16mm/and videotape to DVD and keep the original source material in a cool, dry dark place. In a few years, I'll copy the DVDs again and/or archive them to whatever format is current at the time. Same with a small selection of photos.

The other stuff is not worth saving. Archive only what matters, or everything gets lost in sea of crap.
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nutbastard
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
nah you gotta carve it all into stone.

100101101010010101010100000101...^999999999999999999999999999
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

@nutbastard (Everyone come to snowmodo!!!): 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00111111
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
Well, I also consider that any truly important documents will either be part of public record that I can retrieve, or eventually lose relevance as their purpose is outlived. Photos can pass between thumb drives. As gigabytes get cheaper by the bit, swapping and exchanging will be a breeze. As system buses get faster, transfer times will become a snap. Movies I loved on my hard drive will either lose my interest or can be repurchased or rented years later on whatever new-fangled format is out.

My porn?

Well, I could always get married, and make my own.
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bjarnia
03/26/09

@Kaiser-Machead: "As gigabytes get cheaper by the bit, swapping and exchanging will be a breeze."

You fail to realize that at the same time, the size of the data you are backing up will increase as well.
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

@bjarnia: As will the size of the new external volume.
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nachobel
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
bring back the scribes!
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GitEmSteveDave_ForgotNametag
03/26/09

@nachobel: Would you settle for Mormons? Or at least Narns?
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Brazell
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
The vast majority of stuff saved on your computer is complete trash that should fade away and degrade with the medium that's holding it.

Anything truely important -- public records of land deeds, titles, wills, etc., -- are almost all stored on mediums and through solutions where a party is interested in keeping that material working and relevant.

Your Bachelor degree thesis on Crime & Punishment, saved in WordPerfect 2 format on a floppy disk somewhere in the annals of your attick? Not important, and it's better left lost and gone forever.
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

@MichaelBrazell: Dang I was saying the same thing you were saying. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
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Monty
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
The alternative is that our information will live on forever, and at the rate we are accumulating this data, that would probably be as bad as the concept that eventually it will rot. Converting it to different formats once a decade or so (which technology forces us to do anyway) is probably fine, and then when our bodies rot, chances are our descendants will conveniently forget to do this.
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