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11851

Official Announcements / Re: I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 03:51 AM »

Just want to reiterate something:

More and more I have come to believe in the importance and significance of the idea of users directly funding the products they want.

And more and more I have come to view with frustration, suspicion, and trepidation, the move towards making everything cost free and funded by advertising something else.  I think the distortion this does to everything is harmful.  I think the world is a better place when people contribute directly to fund stuff they like.

So.. trying to fund the site using ads instead of donations is really NOT NOT NOT a direction I want to go.

But I'm not opposed to trying short term experiments to see what it's like.

11852

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 03:43 AM »

Nothing wrong with rsync, or the ftp-based tools i already have.  But that doesn't address the issue of what online storage provider to use.  You say you use hidrive -- that's outside of my budget.

11853

Official Announcements / Re: I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 03:35 AM »

and I fear it might be lost or changed to something totally different because of this move.

i as well think that the whole feel of the community could be badly disrupted and tainted if we ever moved to trying to run ads on the site permanently.  i think there is a good chance it would make people feel less like donating, leading to less of a community, and less of a sense of participation, etc.  that is why i do not have any intention of continuing it long term.  i just think it's useful to test it out and see what kind of results it has.

i'm just curious about it -- curious to see if the ads bring in less or more revenue then when we tried it in 2007.  Curious to see if it feels as counter-productive and dirty as it did back then.  Curious to see if it changes our position in search engines or search engine analytics. Curious to see what ads are shown.  Just plain curious!

11854

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 03:06 AM »

One thing I'm still struggling with is that this is really my last line of defense, and i already have a backup system to version files right away.  The offline backup does not need to happen so frequently.  That runs counter to the way all of these processes work -- they are always running in the background eating up cpu cycles and bandwidth and uploading changed files.

I can see how that's a wonderful feature if you need it -- but if I only need a once-a-week upload for emergencies, these tools seem like they may be a high price to pay in terms of lost cpu cycles/bandwidth.

Which brings us back to Tranglos' suggestion of just using some existing tool to do an encrypted ftp backup on some schedule of my choosing..

11855

Official Announcements / I want to try an experiment on the site for March 2012

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 03:00 AM »

I'd like to try running Ads (google?) on the site for one month, for March 2012 -- just to see what results we get and how it feels.

We last experimented with putting ads on the site in 2007, and then talked about it again in 2010.

From our 2007 experiment I decided I really didn't like it at all.  I am very unlikely to have a different opinion this time, so let me make very clear -- I am not suggesting we have ads on the site permanently -- I just think it would be interesting to see:

• how much income the ads generate.
• what kind of ads come up, and how it makes the site feel.

So what I propose is that:

• I enable ads for exactly one month, the month of March 2012, and then remove them.
• All forum members will be able to turn them off in their profile if they want and so never see them.
• I will publicly report exactly how much revenue they generate so we can all learn something about it.

I consider this an experiment.  Personally I really hate the look of ads on sites, and hate the movement towards everything being free and paid for by ads.  And I dislike the idea of advertising someone else's product that we don't recommend.

But I still think it would be nice to experiment for a month and see if there is anything to be learned from it.

What do you say, can I have permission to try it?

11856

Living Room / Re: Show us a photo of your mutt or other creatures..

« Last post by mouser on February 17, 2012, 02:20 AM »

darwin and mcbiz: cute creatures!

11857

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 06:13 PM »

Interesting benefit for active duty armed service members from CrashPlan:

Armed Forces Seed Offer: To honor your service, members of the Armed Forces actively serving overseas get seeded drives and Restore to Your Door services for free. If you have an active CrashPlan+ account and you are a member of the Armed Forces on active duty overseas, from your ”.mil” email address, please write [email protected] with your name, email address and mailing information, so we can ship your seed drive.

11858

Find And Run Robot / Re: subfolders

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 02:21 PM »

FARR will only search the directories specified in the Search Folders tab, and in the order they are listed.
And by default those folders will be searched to any depth, though you can adjust that for each directory in the Search Folders tab.

11859

Living Room / Re: OK - lets get to know each other... who are you, what do you do, where from?

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 01:48 PM »

Welcome to the site, BGM!  

11860

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 05:40 AM »

Isn't CrashPlan's software a java application?

yes, appears to be.

JavaJones' comprehensive review of CrashPlan is here: https://www.donation...ex.php?topic=26224.0
I had forgotten about it completely -- it's a great review.

I will say that memory use does appear to be a bit high -- perhaps this is related to the point made by highend above about it being a Java app.

11861

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 03:37 AM »

but they'll need to be very friendly 'cos they'll have a copy of your files

encrypted though so they wont be able to read them.  but will they be able to see filenames? that i don't know.

11862

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 03:13 AM »

There is something really important to note about CrashPlan.

You can use the full and powerful application freely to back up encrypted backups to a friend/family PC.

So if like me your goal is to provide a backup solution to protect in case of fire/theft, you could very easily find a friend with the same needs and back up to each other's PCs, at no cost (at least that's my understanding).

11863

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 02:59 AM »

I'm trying CrashPlan now.. It looks really good. Definitely my favorite so far.

11864

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 02:36 AM »

in fact many web hosts actually have policies against using their "unlimited space" plans for this purpose. So while you may get away with it for a while, you could also find your account suspended without warning and unable to access your backups.

great point.  while in my case it wouldn't be a disaster to find myself locked out, since i wont be uploading the only copy of anything -- i think its a high enough likelyhood that it's not the wisest solution to pursue.

11865

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 02:34 AM »

emergency recovery service (they send you a drive with your recovery data on it, instead of having to download 100s of GB over the wire)

nice.

11866

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 16, 2012, 02:32 AM »

Going to check out CrashPlan now..

11867

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 11:51 PM »

You know tranglos I'm starting to think more and more the idea of grabbing a $10/month hosting account with unlimited or large storage space and just using encrypted ftp may be the way to go.

It's not nearly as convenient and automatic, but it does offer the control and also can serve as a backup place to host an emergency backup website..

11868

DonationCoder.com Newsletters / Re: --> Newsletter for February 14, 2012 - "Heart of a Bird"

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 08:07 PM »

Thanks for all the encouragement 

11869

Find And Run Robot / Re: Suggestion: Rename ConfigDir.ini in Portable Zip FindAndRunRobot.zip

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 07:50 PM »

I'm making this suggestion because I don't want the ConfigDir.ini from the ZIP file to overwrite my custom settings in my ConfigDir.ini.

a wise person alerted me to this before and i should have listened.

i was thinking what i might do is use a configdir_default.ini and configdir.ini, with the _default included in the zip.  so if you have your own configdir.ini it would take precedence over the default and never be overwritten.

11870

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 07:39 PM »

I definitely have been considering just doing an encrypted ftp upload.. It's definitely a viable possibility.

And yes i do already use software (Super Flexible File Synchronizer) for the local backups that i could try to leverage for this task.

So yeah, if i don't find something I really like, I may fall back on ftp uploading of encrypted backups.

11871

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 07:16 PM »

I tried Acronis ONLINE backup, and I actually really liked the interface.  Unfortunately I have never before seen a process completely chew up and waste cpu cycles like the resident TrueImageMonitor.exe; it literally rendered my vmware session unusable, and this was while presumably doing nothing but waiting in the background.  Surely a bug in the software of some sort but that would be a completely unacceptable behavior on my real pc if it was eating anywhere near that many cpu cycles when doing nothing..

EDIT:
Since I run true image hard drive backup software, i notice that i already have trueimagemonitor.exe running in the background on my real pc (this is what i meant about acronis bloat); however it may mean that since i already have this running on my pc and it behaves locally, maybe i won't have the crazy cpu usage on my real pc.

11872

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 06:34 PM »

Just trialed corbanite (in a virtual machine of course); it's not for me.  Not enough finegrained control and i dont like how it wants you to select and show files to be backed up.

11873

General Software Discussion / Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 04:45 PM »

Ok after a recent hard drive crash scare, I'm ready to finally bite the bullet and pay for an online backup service.

I do feel quite good about my local backup policies, but I am very poorly protected if there was ever a fire or home robbery, and I feel like it's time for me to address that.

The choices for online backup services are a bit overwhelming -- so let me try to be a bit specific about what I'm looking for.

Price:  It's going to have to be under $100 a year.
Capacity: I'd probably only use this for my coding and document backup, not backing up entire pc images (though that would be nice).  So a 100-500 gb maybe.

Use: My plan is to use this as the final emergency safety in case of fire or theft.  That is, it is very unlikely i will ever have to restore from these backups.  I have my own local backup process that backs up my files regularly to separate hard drives, and versioned backups of my documents -- so i will only need to get data from my online backup if there is a truly catastrophic disaster. In an ideal world i'd also be able to upload a couple of large 100gb full drive backup image files in addition to my documents, but if i can't do that i can live with that.

What I care about:

I like to have complete control over what is being backed up, when, where, etc.  I don't want some opaque thing meant for people who don't want to know details.  I want to be able to see exactly what it is doing and when, and have control over it.  I want to be able to see what's been backed up, how much space i have, etc.  I want flexibility in choosing which folders and file EXTENSIONS are backed up or ignored, and what the schedule is. BUT at the same time, I do not want to have to select every individual file that i want backed up one at a time.

What I don't need:

I don't really need mobile access or synchronization features -- i know that's something that many services are offering lately.  I won't be using this to access files or move them around.  I don't mind having these features -- i just don't need them.

What I've looked at:

I've only begun to look around at services.  Carbonite seems attractive to me.  I don't really need the "unlimited" space, but it wouldn't hurt.  From what i read though, it doesn't seem like it's super nice in terms of allowing you to control stuff, like which file types get backed up -- or to see and control things at a finegrained level of detail.

Acronis Online Backup actually looks surprisingly good to me.  From the screencasts I am impressed with the level of control and transparency.  I've had pretty good experience with Acronis, so that's another plus -- though i'm a bit skeptical of their tendencies to bloatware.  Its $50 a year for 250gb, which is in my pricerange.  It does look like going beyond 250gb is not an option, which is not great.

There are a ton more of these services (mozy, sugarsync, etc.) that i haven't looked into yet.

I have no idea how the cpu/resource use of these things compare.


So.. anyone gone through the process of evaluating these services have any recommendations?

11874

Living Room / Re: Anatomy of a Tear-Jerker: Very cool article on why songs give you chills

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 03:36 PM »

I see Cody likes it, too.

ha! took me a while to spot him.


See if this one gets you -- Our Town by Iris Dement.  It definitely does me.  I think her voice is doing that thing the essay talks about:

11875

Screenshot Captor / Re: Request - Red Box Capture Click

« Last post by mouser on February 15, 2012, 03:32 PM »

it can't be that just a click triggers it -- the reason is that redbox mode is designed to let you keep interacting with the target window before you capture -- that means letting you click to trigger menus, etc.