COMPUTERS, THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY

[Stanley]

I thought it might be worth laying out what I have learned about archiving in general. There are two aspects to it, personal information on HDD is easily dealt with by keeping complete copies of data on external HD, I have two. I keep my data on a separate disk from OS and applications, no point backing them up.There is an archive for each year and so that's all I have to back up, the current year's work. That's about as safe as you can get but of course has the disadvantage that media becomes obsolete. My solution to that is to save the whole of the data on to the latest secure media, at the moment it's external HD. (over 60gb at the moment)
Embedded in my personal data is a different class of material, things like articles, rare texts and research. This has to be treated differently. One of the oldest rules of archiving is to have multiple copies in different locations. I have originals of important work in places like The Record Office, the NW Sound Archive, the Imperial War Museum and copies in libraries all over the world in some cases. The beauty of the Tinternetwebthingy is that we have another way of ensuring multiple copies in separate locations. Make the material free to air and allow copying and downloads. The biggest cause of archive wastage is people holding their work tightly to their chest and then dying! That's why One Guy is so close to my heart, look at the number of times the material has been accessed, often downloaded and no doubt copied and pasted.
Oh and one more 'backup'. I've written and published on Lulu 22 books containing much of the archived material.

[plaques]

Thanks to the good advice by Pluggy a second external 1TB hard drive is now on order.
Perhaps I'm in danger of being labeled a Luddite but I can't come to terms with this 'cloud' storage. I'll go along with Stanley that a lot of detail collected by amateurs should be on open access but what's going on under cover of 'security' has me worried. Being a big follower of George Orwell it doesn't surprise me to see some university professors starting to draw comparisons. 1984 Link The comment: “At the moment it doesn’t seem harmful. But because governments can get hold of this information, they can monitor you, things might change quite dramatically." If I go one stage further and point out the work being done by the Americans on face recognition and mini drone development it won't be long before they have total surveillance on everybody.

[chinatyke]

If I go one stage further and point out the work being done by the Americans on face recognition and mini drone development it won't be long before they have total surveillance on everybody.

Not necessarily a bad thing unless you have something to hide, is it? Imagine being microchipped and DNA mapped at birth and the government knowing everything you subsequently do. Total control of model citizens.

[Pluggy]

If I go one stage further and point out the work being done by the Americans on face recognition and mini drone development it won't be long before they have total surveillance on everybody.

Not necessarily a bad thing unless you have something to hide, is it? Imagine being microchipped and DNA mapped at birth and the government knowing everything you subsequently do. Total control of model citizens.

Can't quite see everyone agreeing with you there China.

I'm quite laid back about it, but some I know would be foaming at the mouth......

[Stanley]

Increased surveillance... It's inevitable and all we can do is be aware, lie back and think of England...

[David Whipp]

Irony alert on China's post!

[Tizer]

Orwell's mistake was in thinking that Big Brother would be government or a tyrant whereas the reality is that it's the commercial businesses that are driven by taking our money from us!

[Stanley]

And collecting mass data!

[Steven Chorkley]

Yes, however they have changed the rules for Windows 8, for every version except RT you are able to downgrade to Windows 7 Professional

Link ?

Everything I've read says Pro only. I can't honestly see Microsoft allowing you to down(up)grade a cheap home OS to a much more expensive Pro version. It would be a very cheap way of getting machines you can marry to a Domain.

Win 8.1 -.£72.99 : http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/produc ... -90QL.html

Win 7 Pro - £103.15 : http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/produc ... -955Q.html

Win 8.1 Pro £109.99 : http://www.businessdirect.bt.com/produc ... -90QH.html

http://www.microsoft.com/oem/en/licensi ... A19H8gFuIs
Sorry! You are right Pro only, this site only states 8.1, but 8 falls under the same category.

I thought it might be worth laying out what I have learned about archiving in general. There are two aspects to it, personal information on HDD is easily dealt with by keeping complete copies of data on external HD, I have two. I keep my data on a separate disk from OS and applications, no point backing them up.There is an archive for each year and so that's all I have to back up, the current year's work. That's about as safe as you can get but of course has the disadvantage that media becomes obsolete. My solution to that is to save the whole of the data on to the latest secure media, at the moment it's external HD. (over 60gb at the moment)
Embedded in my personal data is a different class of material, things like articles, rare texts and research. This has to be treated differently. One of the oldest rules of archiving is to have multiple copies in different locations. I have originals of important work in places like The Record Office, the NW Sound Archive, the Imperial War Museum and copies in libraries all over the world in some cases. The beauty of the Tinternetwebthingy is that we have another way of ensuring multiple copies in separate locations. Make the material free to air and allow copying and downloads. The biggest cause of archive wastage is people holding their work tightly to their chest and then dying! That's why One Guy is so close to my heart, look at the number of times the material has been accessed, often downloaded and no doubt copied and pasted.
Oh and one more 'backup'. I've written and published on Lulu 22 books containing much of the archived material.

I like that actually! And 60GB's isn't anywhere as near as bad as I was expecting! You maybe able to get away with backing that up online too if you ever wished in the future.

I also wondered, Barnoldswick is apparently getting FTTP. I was wondering where the availability lies. I know that this will only be available via BT Retail as they aren't required to share their network with other providers, so will be expensive, still wondering on availability though as i know there are plans to upgrade to gigabit in the distant future.

Also one for Pluggy, I'm researching into BSD and Linux, both extremely similar, online explanations don't seem to be answering my questions... what's the advantages of each system other than their licences? If they run the same software and work the same way, what does it matter?

[Stanley]

I don't know what FTTP is....
I learned something yesterday. Got a panic call from a friend in the States who was up against the perennial problem of trying to contact a UK ISP from abroad. They don't realise they are dealing with global communications and also don't seem to realise that Freephone numbers can't be accessed from abroad. Roger had to contact them by phone because the online forms demand a UK telephone number and he hasn't got one. I found him a land line number which he rang but after 30 minutes of lift music and being cut off he tried again and got nothing but lift music. So he rang me in extreme frustration. I told him to stay by the phone and I'd be back within 20 minutes.
I rang Talktalk and after the usual repetitive explanations to different agents I found that they have a 'New Lines Section. When I finally got through to them the lady was very helpful and said she'd call Roger straight away. 30 minutes later Roger rang, contract set up and when they arrive the line will be functional and a modem waiting for them.
I have never found this 'New Lines Section' on the website. I suggested to the lady that she flag this up with the management and point out to them the problem with Freephone numbers. She said she would but also let slip that this was always happening. Wouldn't you think that they would have solved this by now?
Got an email from my friends this morning, once more I am God!

[Big Kev]

I don't know what FTTP is....

Fibre to the Premises. You've seen the new green cabinets popping up around the town, these will have a fibre link from the exchange, FTTC, Fibre to the Cabinet. The existing copper wire is then usually used to connect to the house which restricts the available speed. By running a new fibre cable, from cabinet to premises, you'll get a faster broadband connection. I believe Sky are offering the service.

[Stanley]

Thanks Kev......

[Pluggy]

I also wondered, Barnoldswick is apparently getting FTTP. I was wondering where the availability lies. I know that this will only be available via BT Retail as they aren't required to share their network with other providers, so will be expensive, still wondering on availability though as i know there are plans to upgrade to gigabit in the distant future.

Also one for Pluggy, I'm researching into BSD and Linux, both extremely similar, online explanations don't seem to be answering my questions... what's the advantages of each system other than their licences? If they run the same software and work the same way, what does it matter?

The cynic in me thinks going to FTTP will just move the bottleneck further upstream......

There are slight differnces in the way BSD and Linux work, as well as their licences (and the obvious mascot thing with Penguin vs Demon). Most applications are available for either. As far as I'm concerned the difference isn't worth worrying about. Each has their advocates who care passionately that theirs is better than the other. Its all about choice, find one you like and stick with it.

[Stanley]

I suppose I'm Average Man in terms of opinions about relative merits of different Linux based systems. All I know is that Ubuntu has changed my life and there is no way I would willingly change.... It works, seamlessly and reliably, what more could a bloke ask?

[Tizer]

One odd thing I've found with our Ubuntu PCs concerns the cordless mouse. Mrs Tiz needed a new mouse and she got this `Daffodil' one from Amazon which is cheap and gets good feedback ratings:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daffodil-WMS335 ... odil+mouse
I liked it and decided to get one too but being cautious I tried her mouse on my PC and found it won't work. We both have been using `cordless' mice. Mine was the older type with a USB base station cabled to the PC and her new one by a simple USB connector in the PC. The main difference between our Ubuntu PCs is that hers is 32 bit and mine a 64 bit but I don't know if that can account for the different behaviour.

[Pluggy]

One odd thing I've found with our Ubuntu PCs concerns the cordless mouse. Mrs Tiz needed a new mouse and she got this `Daffodil' one from Amazon which is cheap and gets good feedback ratings:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Daffodil-WMS335 ... odil+mouse
I liked it and decided to get one too but being cautious I tried her mouse on my PC and found it won't work. We both have been using `cordless' mice. Mine was the older type with a USB base station cabled to the PC and her new one by a simple USB connector in the PC. The main difference between our Ubuntu PCs is that hers is 32 bit and mine a 64 bit but I don't know if that can account for the different behaviour.

Shutdown the one that doesn't work, unplug the mouse receiver, plug in an old steam driven corded mouse and fire the computer up again. Log in and run a terminal, at the terminal prompt

dmesg [return]

make a note of the last line that comes up.
Plug the mouse receiver in and repeat the dmesg .

Whats changed is everything thats happend since you plugged the receiver in and may yield some clues. Further clues can be had by repeating the exercise on the computer the mouse does work on and comparing the two. Feeding the output lines into google will generate further clues. If not paste it up here and I'll see if I can make sense of it.

[Stanley]

Tiz, if it is any help, I run a cordless mouse on a plug in terminal on the box and it's OK. I think I'm on the same system as you, 12.04 64bit. It's a Logitech mouse that came with the cordless keyboard.
Just got a new version of Firefox. 43gb installed, no problems. Wonderful service!

[Tizer]

Thanks Pluggy. I'm using a corded mouse now and I did dmesg and got the last entry as follows:
[ 1721.020276] type=1400 audit(1402562361.769:31): apparmor="DENIED" operation="capable" parent=1 profile="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=1046 comm="cupsd" pid=1046 comm="cupsd" capability=36 capname="block_suspend"

Then plugged the USB in for the Daffodil mouse and repeated the dmesg. It ran to the same as the above but was followed by:
[ 3951.610509] usb 1-1.4: new full-speed USB device number 4 using ehci_hcd
[ 3951.703963] usb 1-1.4: unable to read config index 0 descriptor/start: -32
[ 3951.703969] usb 1-1.4: chopping to 0 config(s)
[ 3951.706352] usb 1-1.4: string descriptor 0 read error: -32
[ 3951.706359] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=1d57, idProduct=ac01
[ 3951.706362] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
[ 3951.706631] usb 1-1.4: no configuration chosen from 0 choices
[ 3951.706848] hub 1-1:1.0: port 4 disabled by hub (EMI?), re-enabling...
[ 3951.706852] usb 1-1.4: USB disconnect, device number 4
[ 3955.758384] hub 1-1:1.0: Cannot enable port 4. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 3959.682258] hub 1-1:1.0: Cannot enable port 4. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 3963.606254] hub 1-1:1.0: Cannot enable port 4. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 3967.530126] hub 1-1:1.0: Cannot enable port 4. Maybe the USB cable is bad?
[ 3967.530234] hub 1-1:1.0: unable to enumerate USB device on port 4

I've previously plugged it into other USB ports on this PC but with no success.

[Pluggy]

Assuming the USB ports work for other devices, the likely answer is that the Daffodil doesn't like the drivers in 64 bit Ubuntu (or the other way around) whereas its OK with the 32 Bit.

Googling the crux of the error "hub 1-1:1.0: Cannot enable port 4. Maybe the USB cable is bad?" , suggests it isn't unknown and occurs with numerous USB devices with numerous Linux Distros. The Raspberry Pi gets it quite a bit with numerous USB devices and that is purely 32 Bit. (The Pi never did have 100% USB in my opinion) There isn't a standard answer.

[Tizer]

Thanks for looking! It's not a problem really and I'm happily working with a corded mouse at the moment - my last mouse went through batteries like mice go through cheese so there is an advantage in being bounced back to the corded beasty (which I'm sure you'll endorse!). If I want a cordless one in the future I'll search the Ubuntu pages for one that's known to work with 64-bit Ubuntu.

[Stanley]

Logitech works.

[Pluggy]

Some of us are too tight to buy batteries for mice and keyboards......

[Tizer]

I still use a Logitech cordless keyboard that I must have had for over 10 years but I eventually had to ditch the mouse that came with it - the plastic went soft and sticky!

[Stanley]

One of mine dropped out but I carried on! The Logitech keyboard is the only one I have ever had where the letters on the keys don't wear off....

[plaques]

Back on my security rant. The old chestnut of who is spying on who! To quote: In a statement, GCHQ said its work is "carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary and proportionate". It now appears that there is an enormous legal loophole which more or less implies that if information, Facebook, Tweets or a Google search travels outside the UK, which considering that most servers can be located anywhere, then its up for grabs. Security link. Of course 'if you have nothing to hide etc'. Ever wondered why people close their curtains at night?