"Why do people have cellphones?" written by Tinypliny on estrip.org

Category: i-tech

09/05/10 07:17 - ID#52661

Why do people have cellphones?

According to a recent study:

91 percent of Americans say that mobile phones "make them feel safer." Some 88 percent of respondents said that they have a mobile phone, so they can "connect to friends and family to arrange plans."

I use it as an excellent and versatile alarm clock. It scarcely leaves home even though the SIM card is now housed in a smartphone. I have never felt safer with a cellphone and hate talking over phones in general. And that is how some surveys are way off mark and unrepresentative [of me! me! me!].

tinypliny writes at 12:30:32 09/06/10 - Comment #58279: There. Happy? :-)

uncutsaniflush writes at 09:48:43 09/06/10 - Comment #58275: (e:tinypliny) - I wasn't forgetting that you weren't "American" but I reckoned that it wasn't my job to mention. I think you forgot that my wife isn't "American" and that by many people's standards, I'm not "American" despite of )or because of me being a naturalized U.S. citizen. So all three of us are foreign born.

As to the definition of "American" in telephone polls, I daresay that an "American" is anyone who answers the phone and consents to be questioned. So, if you ever decided to answer your phone when it rings, you could be an "American" if a pollster calls. No visa required.

tinypliny writes at 07:22:55 09/06/10 - Comment #58272: (e:uncutsaniflush): You are forgetting one vital part. I am not American. I am a gross outlier by default. Very unrepresented, I am afraid.

PS: Using the word "unrepresentative" (or indeed, "representative") in a sentence without a qualifier could get you drawn and quartered in cold blood at a statistics exam. Lucky for me, far from being any kind of exam, my whole "blogging theorem" revolves around perfecting the art of poking as much fun as possible, and not taking myself or anyone else too seriously.

If I were in "work mode", I would have dragged some heavyweight muck along --> :::link:::

;-)

(e:Paul) - Yes, the concept of "phone" needs an update. (e:uncut), I checked sometime back and verizon didn't tell me that they can do a data-access-only plan analogous to the dry-loop dsl.

museumchick writes at 09:56:14 09/05/10 - Comment #58268: I am not a huge fan of talking in phones either... i rather prefer seeing people in person or writing to them. They do make good alarm clocks, though!

uncutsaniflush writes at 09:32:42 09/05/10 - Comment #58267: (e:paul) - "a phone you can't talk on" isn't that the iPhone. More seriously, can't you just get data/messaging plans without voice these days?

paul writes at 09:09:16 09/05/10 - Comment #58266: I wish you could buy a phone that you can't talk on.

uncutsaniflush writes at 08:57:43 09/05/10 - Comment #58265: (e:tinypliny) - are you saying that you think 91% percent of Americans feel as you do? Is that what you mean that "some surveys are way off mark and unrepresentative."

I dislike talking on the phone myself but just about anywhere I go I see people talking on their cellphones sometimes only to say inane things "yeah, I'm at Wegmans next to the ice icecream."

Perhaps cell phones only give an illusion of safety but, unlike you, many people feel reassured if they can call someone (be it friends, family or the police) if their car breaks down or gets into an accident.

If you believe news reports, especially in bad weather, lives have been saved because people were able to tell rescuers their locations because they had cell phones.

So I find the statistic you quoted quite believable. And I have a question for you, why do you think the statistic is "way off mark and unrepresentative?" And, as a scientist, what is your basis for your theorem?

Please and thank you.

ElmwoodEyes writes at 07:44:54 09/05/10 - Comment #58264: i use it for facebook, Huffington Post and NY Times...and will rarely pick up if you call me. That being said, I feel lost without it.

Permalink: Why_do_people_have_cellphones_.html
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Last Modified: 09/06/10 12:31

Category: i-tech

07/22/10 10:45 - ID#52258

I love Chrome browser

And I absolutely DETEST sites and plugins that will only work with Firefox. Firefox may have been the darling of the opensource-the-damn-browser enthusiasts back in the day but its S.L.O.W, outdated and paleolithic compared to the blisteringly fast and spiffy chrome. I refuse to let some hideous web-application bully me into installing what I believe is a far inferior browser than Chrome.

I hope whoever developed the non-chrome compatible web presentation software from the company called Webex rots in slow browser world for their atrocious browser-discrimination crimes. I am also disappointed that the National Cancer Institute (NCI) uses this freak Webex company for their webinar. Hate you both for making me suffer with Firefox yesterday and today, for having to deal with the zillion yucky registry entries your dear plugin and Firefox have left on my system. My clean system feels so polluted, no thanks to you, NCI and Webex. UGH.

Permalink: I_love_Chrome_browser.html
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Last Modified: 07/22/10 11:07

Category: i-tech

04/11/10 09:35 - ID#51370

Absolutely essential software. Take 2.

In descending order of can't-do-without-it...

Internet

Chrome
~~Skype~~
Google Video and Chat plugin

Academic/Writing

Q10. Writing at its core.
Some LaTeX client and BibTeX manager
Some PDF client with ability to highlight and annotate (don't care which one, currently have PDF Xchange viewer)
Some PDF printer driver
Sadly, M$ Word. :/ (None of my academic advisors are comfortable reviewing PDFs.)
Sadly, M$ Powerpoint (I am learning LaTeX Beamer class but progress has been slow. Like S.L.OOO.W)

Art/Diagramming

Paint.NET
myPaint

Utilities

Winkey
7Zip
Vistaswitcher (yep, it works on WinXP)
CCleaner

Analysis:

R

Media

Foobar
VLC
SRS Audio Sandbox

Permalink: Absolutely_essential_software_Take_2_.html
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Last Modified: 08/26/13 09:05

Category: i-tech

04/09/10 09:04 - ID#51359

My next computing solution...

Will definitely NOT be a boring old laptop or an ipad. Both lack the flexible stylus/tablet based solution I need. Though this is M$, you have to agree that the concept interface is pretty sweet.

Permalink: My_next_computing_solution_.html
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Category: i-tech

01/07/10 06:31 - ID#50765

My Laptop Battery is Dying.

My laptop battery goes from 96% "discharging" to 5% "Critical Battery Level, Shutting down NOW" in 20 minutes flat. This is with the monitor off and on lowest power consumption settings. It never reaches 100% charge, according to the battery monitor. I always see it hovering around 95%. Worse, it takes just 20 minutes to charge to 95% .The laptop and battery are just around 1.5 years old. :/

I guess I am partially to blame for this poor battery performance because I really should have run the battery through the charge-discharge cycle all this time, instead of running it from the AC outlet power most of the time.

Maybe Sanyo makes trash batteries. Who knows... Mine is a
LION NS2P3SZNJ5WR

I have learnt my bitter battery lesson in time for my next Chrome OS powered netbook - which hopefully is just round the corner.

Permalink: My_Laptop_Battery_is_Dying_.html
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Category: i-tech

11/20/09 03:22 - ID#50350

The future of Personal Computing?

Chrome OS went opensource on Wednesday.

I am excited but I also wonder if comfort in the knowledge of having most important things on your harddrive (if the internet were to crash and burn one day) would ever go away. I have a 1TB harddrive that I back-up things on - and I may potentially get another one. Why, then, is this concept of netbooking exciting?

I think people like me lead dual lives - a mobile, assimilate-and-let-go "info-now" life and a more static laid-back static "make-do-with-what-you-have" life. In the ancient past, I might have had a laptop for one life and a desktop for the other but now I have 2 laptops. My bigger older bulkier laptop serves as an emergency back-up for major disasters (which means it never gets used but its there all the same). The other smaller laptop is the one that I port around - almost inevitably to journal clubs and other venues that require me to review some written document.

I gave up printing more than a year back. All my docs are now online and backed up on my 1TB harddrive. I surf the web extensively and all my information gathering happens on this smaller laptop. Since I don't take my harddrive with me, whatever little data I have while on the go is on the tiny laptop. I depend on the net for the rest. So this could well be a netbook. I could get rid of the other laptop, retain my harddrive as a vestige of the ancient desktop and move ahead.

Some day, when I have a blazingly fast broadband satellite access to the net, I could ditch the harddrive as well. I just wonder if this day will coincide with the official release of Chrome OS. :)

I would love to see the owner of the voice in the video in action. I saw the video 3 times just because the presentation was so snappy, and so Google!

And if you are instinctively thinking of Windows when it comes to long boot up times, you would be wrong. The latest Ubuntu takes a WHOLE godawful minute to boot and you can't even mod it easily as you can mod Win XP. I am sick of the holier-than-thou attitude of linuxers when you ask if you could just cut out all the crap add-on software that Ubuntu ships with* - the answer is that its free so you shouldn't expect too much. I say, to hell with you and your snobbish attitude.

If you can't give civilized useful answers to genuine questions from new users, you are no better than the micro$*** folks who just keep making their operating system even more bloated with every revision. At least WinXP can be stripped down to a lean performance beast. Requests for user-friendly ways of slipstreaming and coring Ubuntu make it to the "innovative future ideas" board instead of being listed as priorities and answered - just goes to show how completely behind the times and user-unfriendly Ubuntu (and generally the linux community) really is.

PS: YES. I have tried Puppy Linux and its no more user-friendly than an esoteric command line system with all the commands in a useless pretty GUI drawn on a puppy's back. :/

jim writes at 11:55:26 11/20/09 - Comment #53044: typo aargh

jim writes at 11:53:36 11/20/09 - Comment #53043: SSD

All I'm sayin.

uncutsaniflush writes at 11:51:18 11/20/09 - Comment #53042: Wow! I'm old enough to think that booting up in a minute is fast. When I first got to work with an IBM pc at work in the early '80s, I think I could go down the street for an ice cream and get back befpre the system was booted. Anyone remember the 2 floppy drives PCs?

The box (e:leetee) uses runs a selectively updated (by me) pclinuxos 2007 :::link::: for stability. We have an asus eee 901 that's running moblin 2.1 :::link::: . I couldn't stand the Xandros gui that the eee came with. I have a couple of boxes that play with. I like e17 (more accurately Enligthenment DR17) :::link::: so I really like elive :::link::: which debian with e17. I tend to play with the latest development versions and push them until they break.

I also run Arch with e17. I'm a distro whore so I've always got a few random distros floating around on stray partitions. I think that I stopped counting how many distros I played when I reached a 100 about 4 years ago.

tinypliny writes at 10:09:44 11/20/09 - Comment #53030: Wow - thanks so much for the detailed responses (e:uncutsaniflush). Had fun reading them. :)

I did a full install of the latest Ubuntu version on the latest Toshiba laptop (my parent's)- and it took a full minute and some odd seconds to boot up. My mum asked me if it was "up yet" - and she is probably the MOST patient person around!

Keeping a laptop turned on for over a few hours is not really an option for my parents - so boot-up time is a big deal.

Thanks for the Arch recommendation - I will be sure to try it out. I am now really curious to know which distro you and (e:leetee) run. :)

uncutsaniflush writes at 11:42:52 11/20/09 - Comment #53008: Oh yeah, if you have the time and want to build a customized Linux that only has the apps that you want, I would recommend Arch :::link::: It takes a wee bit of time but eventually you would get a (e:tinypliny) Linux that boots very fast.

uncutsaniflush writes at 11:33:20 11/20/09 - Comment #53007: Zealots of any Operating System sort be they Linux, osX, or, dare I say it, Windows, are often annoying.

I suspect you encountered some of the RTFM (READ THE FUCKING MANUAL) bunch. Not all Linux users are like that.

That being said, I'm one of the crazies (along with the lovely Lettuce ((e:leetee))) who uses Linux on the desktop every day and we done so since 2001. From what I hear, that makes us weird and crazy. For most people, I would recommend osX as an alternative to Windows before I would recommend Linux because of better software/hardware integration. Unless cost is an issue.

Not all Linuxes run equally well on all hardware. Because of this I would recommend buying a box or 'top with Linux pre-installed to avoid hardware/software compatiblity issues for most people if they want to use Linux as alternative to Windows.

I'm a not a big fan of Ubuntu. I've played with several releases and found it unsatisfactory. But I know lots of people who love it.

As to the Ubuntu boot time, are you talking about a live cd or an installed version? Most distros boot faster from an install than a live cd. One generic way to speed up boot time in Linux is to only start up the services you actually use at boot time. Lots of distros including Ubuntu start up all sorts of unnecessary services to make it more "convenient" for the user.

On Linux boxes, most users measure uptime in weeks and months so a long boot time isn't seen as much of a problem if you boot up a couple times a year. Of course, on a 'top, boot time matters. There are versions of Ubuntu and other distros that specifically configured for net-tops and do a much better job than vanilla Ubuntu.

tinypliny writes at 11:20:21 11/20/09 - Comment #53006: The GDLF - looks like the French Revolution of data. :)

(e:zobar) - I think Ubuntu out of the box is fine for people who don't care about boot-up times, slow performance, dragging programs etc. The average windows users put up with these things on a regular basis. In fact, I think less viruses are written for linux so it might have a slight advantage if pushed to this kind of user.

But the idea of not having control over the zillion processes running in the background annoys me. Having to wait a minute for the boot sequences drives me crazy. I am happy that I can hack and strip my operating system till its running just the bare minimum I need and nothing extra AND boots in less than 14 seconds.

Naturally, it feels crippling that I can't do this with Ubuntu. The minute you strip out some extra bundled email program or IM chat program in it, a ton of other functionalities are affected without warning. It is as if the garbage is built into the OS. Of course, the minute you point this out at a linux forum, they get all defensive, snobbish and sometimes insulting at your "windows" background. A typical response is "Oh, linux is perfect as it is - keep the whole dirty idea of "modding" to your windows forums. Classic example of non-receptive behaviour.

jim writes at 09:30:57 11/20/09 - Comment #53002: Google Data Liberation Front: :::link:::

zobar writes at 08:36:33 11/20/09 - Comment #53001: Generally speaking I trust cloud computing because at their data centers even their redundancy has redundancy, redundantly. But the recent large-scale data loss at Danger/Microsoft/Sidekick and the occasional outages at GMail take the cloud analogy a little too far: the computing cloud, unlike real clouds, should not be ephemeral.

I used to use Linux. It was pretty ideal for what I did, but I thought the Linux Desktop people were crazy. Only geeks claimed Linux was ready for non-geeks to use. But that was ten years ago and I'd kind of hoped they'd made a little progress since then.

- Z

Permalink: The_future_of_Personal_Computing_.html
Words: 557

Category: i-tech

09/23/09 04:30 - ID#49839

Why am I on Twitter?

My twitter experience started out as a slightly staggered instant messaging/helpdesk/news-update platform for the online services and news sources I use for my school/professional work.

However, quite inevitably it has spilled over into a duplicate twitter account for non-work-related interest areas such as (e:strip), Buffalo and then overflowed to other virtual Buffalo denizens not on (e:strip). My mind has an (almost certainly) inaccurate map of these crazy online connections I am making. They are all over the place:

The green ticks are the people I have met in non-virtual worlds and the question marks are the unknowns. The connections are people or news sources whom I have connected to online.

I am not sure where all this twittering and friend-feeding is going (an element of time-wasting is almost certainly involved). However, my school work is definitely benefiting through my twitter window. I don't like the whole Facebook culture of one-line breathless status messaging and will always prefer wordy run-on blogs but there is an indescribable quotient of "cool" in being able to message myself with a link or post an observation and have a focused, relevant, informed and witty social commentary tacked on to it.

There is also this thrill in being able to address anyone and everyone on the network with no prefaces. It feels like a huge party conversation in which you can join or from which you can drop out anytime. I am finding that some of these conversations (especially on the school front) are involved, funny and lead to insights that are quite impossible in a formal single-track interaction with just the source material (without added benefit of a social commentary).

Overall, I feel like I have a flashy but useful tool in my school toolbox. But the strange fact is somehow Buffalo is becoming even more intimate each day even as the whole area of unknowns steadily gets bigger.

tinypliny writes at 02:58:39 09/24/09 - Comment #51656: Somewhat tangential but still on topic.

I hope I am not so twittered out that I am forced into unseemly text-message word contractions and grammatical abominations.

There is an entity called "cut spelling" - that takes the snob out of English spelling but since using it continues to look like you might not have completed your high school diploma, I don't want to take the risk.

tinypliny writes at 02:49:24 09/24/09 - Comment #51655: It might seem as if it might be graceless but really, I think it's not worthwhile to hold on to influences that drag you down or cramp your style. As they say, life is incredibly short and there are so many other wonderful people around.

The overarching theme should be: Behave and be reasonable or I will just drift away from you. Sticking with people and putting up with unwarranted moodiness and behaviour quirks (because of whatever sad excuse) is so overrated.

If you are making a BIG effort to be nice, I don't see any reason why other people should not make at least half an effort to be the same. If they can't, its their problem, not yours.

heidi writes at 09:46:13 09/23/09 - Comment #51654: Yeah, I could unfollow her but then she'd know that I unfollowed her, wouldn't she? And I'd feel like a heel. Besides, it's been eight years since we were together. We reconnected about a year and a half ago when she finally apologized.

There, sum total of my twitter and facebook drama.

tinypliny writes at 06:11:33 09/23/09 - Comment #51648: Omission there. I would ^say tweeting...

tinypliny writes at 06:10:34 09/23/09 - Comment #51647: (e:mrmike) I would tweeting around in widening circles with spokes attached. :)

The school twitter is an interactive version of an RSS feed - pretty handy. In one week of reading, keeping up and commenting, I have a new research idea and that is invaluable.

tinypliny writes at 05:58:30 09/23/09 - Comment #51645: Can't you just unfollow her? I mean you are technically supposed to be annoyed and put on a demonstration of e(a)xing, no? ;-)

tinypliny writes at 05:53:48 09/23/09 - Comment #51641: Yeah, I agree, that is irritating. For now I am being very cautious in whom I follow. :)

You found my school account. hahaha. My "loony" account is the one under this nick. I guess I am not important or old enough to be on their search lists yet.

heidi writes at 05:16:04 09/23/09 - Comment #51639: actually, i rarely read or post to twitter, probably because my ex-gf tweets constantly, and lately it's been all about her new gf. do i need to hear about their morning rituals? i don't think so.

heidi writes at 05:13:14 09/23/09 - Comment #51638: sheesh. took me long enough to find you.

mrmike writes at 04:37:47 09/23/09 - Comment #51637: On Twitter too. I think the tweets are real similar to the status announcement. If we follow each other, are we tweeting in circles?

Permalink: Why_am_I_on_Twitter_.html
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Category: i-tech

07/29/09 02:41 - ID#49408

A complete minimalistic reformat

I had a nice wake-up scare this weekend and lost some newer revisions of my dissertation. I am not sure entirely what happened but overnight, some of my revised copies went back to their earlier versions with all their glorious little ancient mistakes. It was a very painful weekend. My dissertation is now backed up in 4 more places. My laptop looks like this:

Source:

Yeah, it really does.

I am on a cleaning up and backing up mission and I think I want to go back to the bare-bones aggressively slipstreamed Win XP version that booted in 14 seconds in another life long long long back. I have so many programs here that I have no idea about. I have some piece of obscure software that simultaneously displays weather and forecast in 10 cities. For some reason that I don't have the faintest clue about, one of the cities is Kathmandu, Nepal. Really? What was I thinking??! That is insane, even for me. Did I plan an ill-fated climb of the Mt. Everest in one of my nightmares?? That .exe just went into oblivion trash.

I have no less than 6 Java updates installed! Innumerable re-installs of Firefox and Opera with stray shortcuts ALL OVER the place.This is a living nightmare.

I am whittling it down. Maybe I should just stick to these in the next install

Browser:
Firefox.

Documents
Word 2007
MikTeX

Books/Articles
Adobe Pro
CutePDF
PDF Unlocker

Citations
Bibtex4Word
Jabref

Statistics
R
G*Power3

Visual Media
MPC
ffdshow

Audio
Foobar2000
SRS Labs Plugin
RealAlt Plugin
Mp3Tag

Art
Paint.NET
ArtRage
IrfanView

IRC/Phone
Skype
Neebly

Utilities
Winkey
TaskSwitchXP Pro
7zip
CCleaner
FreeCommander

Do you have better alternatives? :)

NB: I think I might need to update this thread - I have so many random things on my laptop, its ridiculous.
: Wow that image is so tiny, the font became unreadable... I thought the width limit for (e:strip) was 600 pixels. Apparently not...

Permalink: A_complete_minimalistic_reformat.html
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Category: i-tech

02/22/09 05:56 - ID#47862

External Harddrive Advice/Poll

I really need an external HD for backup. I looked at online backup but some of the reliable ones cost a ton of money per year. The better option might be to get 2 HDs - make back ups on both, keep one at home and one in the office. I am really tempted by the < $100 Seagate freeagent 1TB drives but they have recently had a string of failures across the globe. Someone told me to build a RAID1 array instead. What do you all think?

1. Do you currently own (ir have you ever owned) an external hard drive?

2. If yes, has it ever died?

3. What brand was it?

4. Was it a USB harddrive or a RAID array?

5. Would you recommend a RAID array or the USB harddrives?

6. What brand would you recommend? What set-up?

Ended up getting a Western Digital 1TB Elements Harddrive

It has been functioning pretty well - but you can never be 100% sure about when hard drives will throw in their towel. I am hoping for the best since this one seems to have such uniformly good reviews at Amazon.

theecarey writes at 12:21:43 02/25/09 - Comment #45900: I was looking at some sale stuff at Best Buy:
Western Digital 500GB external usb portable for $120
:::link:::

or a heavier version for $90
:::link:::

or for $120, the 1TB- bigger, but I don't need to carry it around:
:::link:::

I dont so much need a TB, but the price seems right..

tinypliny writes at 11:28:15 02/24/09 - Comment #45898: Oh my. I don't think I have such high-tech needs. :) I think owning a time capsule makes you a certified tech-whore. ;-) I don't even have wireless at home. I have a DSL lowest-level modem and I have no aspirations of zooming on the super highway with automatic and silent databanking and maybe global music on demand? ;)

But oooooohh.. I am so going to flaunt my new found time capsule knowledge at my sweatshop office. Hehehee

zobar writes at 03:56:11 02/24/09 - Comment #45878: I bought a 500GB Time Capsule for Christmas/my birthday. Normally I wouldn't have sprung for it but I'm very impressed.

Time Capsule and Airport Extreme are basically the same - they've got everything most people would need for a home network. They've got a 802.11a/b/g/n wireless base station and 3-port Gigabit Ethernet switch for all your networking. They've got a USB port. If you plug in a printer, it'll share the printer on the network; if you plug in a drive, it'll share the drive. [If you plug in a USB hub, you can share both.] Additionally, Time Capsule has a built-in 500GB or 1TB drive so you don't need a spare disk. The whole thing is Mac & PC compatible.

In addition, if you have a Mac, you can target the Time Capsule/Airport Extreme for your Time Machine backups. You don't even need to think about it- your computer gets backed up every hour when you're connected to the network. [You can target an external drive for your Time Machine backups as well, but you have to remember to connect it.]

- Z

tinypliny writes at 09:26:15 02/23/09 - Comment #45866: Wow - that's a ton of detailed opinion. Thanks so much (e:uncutsaniflush), (e:zzzzzobbbbar) and (e:heidi)!

I think I will go with a USB but probably a smaller drive than 1TB. From your opinions - portable/laptop ones might be better. None of you recommended Seagate - so maybe I won't be wise to get those. I guess I just need to decide between a Toshiba, LaCie and Western digital.

Time Capsule is too expensive!! Do you have it??? What is so time capsuly about it? Does it have transcendental space like the Tardis? ;)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TARDIS

uncutsaniflush writes at 12:36:48 02/23/09 - Comment #45840: Oh,yeah, I forgot to mention in my first comment. You also have a another choice for backup if you have a router - Network Attached Storage :::link::: That's what I'm planning to add to my lan at some indefinite point in the future.

uncutsaniflush writes at 12:14:23 02/23/09 - Comment #45839: 1. yes
2. no
3. Western Digital portable 80 gb and also I had am usb enclosure that I put in whatever stray h/d I had laying around.
4. usb
5 It depends on how important your data is to you. Multi-location redundant backup is a very good idea for important data; so you might consider a raid array at home with a usb h/d at the office.
6. I think (e:heidi) has the right idea - cheap with good reviews. I think one thing you should consider if you want just an external h/d (i.e. one that just sits on your desk next to your computer) or a portable h/d that (hopefully) is designed to withstand the shock of being carried from place to place.

zobar writes at 07:40:08 02/22/09 - Comment #45833: One drive is probably enough, unless you are working with an obscene amount of data - drives are very high capacity these days, and a RAID array would add unnecessary bulk. If you have a laptop and average-person storage needs, I would recommend a portable, bus-powered enclosure. 'Portable' enclosures contain laptop drives and are significantly smaller than desktop enclosures, but they only go up to half a terabyte. ['Only' half a terabyte is more than me and (e:dragonlady7) use combined, and she's a photo & music packrat.] Portable enclosures are also very convenient for sharing large files.

1. Yes, currently.
2. Not yet.
3. The drive is a 200GB Toshiba laptop drive MK2035GSS and the enclosure is a WiebeTech ToughTech Mini :::link::: - both since updated.
4. USB 2, FireWire 400/800.
5. RAID is probably unnecessary.
6. Go for convenience, because if it's not convenient for you to do a backup, you won't. (e:fi) did a whole lot of research and ended up with a Toshiba HDDR320E03X :::link::: which seems to be a good value. If you have a Mac laptop and $300 to burn, the Apple Time Capsule :::link::: is seriously the best thing ever and I will bend your ear about it if you like.

- Z

heidi writes at 07:39:25 02/22/09 - Comment #45832: 1. Yes
2. No
3. LaCie 80 gb HDD (out of date but it backs up the critical stuff - when i bought it, prices were approx $1/gb)
4. USB
5. USB
6. Cheap with good reviews.

(Yeah, I think I need to get one soon!)

Permalink: External_Harddrive_Advice_Poll.html
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Category: i-tech

08/24/08 11:18 - ID#45444

The OpenID Future Webscape

I decided to take a break and set up my OpenID* today. I chose myvidoop.com

as my OpenID delegate. I was somewhat surprised by the extremely elaborate and somewhat outlandish hoops of security they made me jump through, to register an OpenID. It was fun in a bizarre way.

First, they throw the standard registration questions at you.
Username:
Password:
DOB:

After you answer those, they take you to a panel of 12 image concepts called the ImageShield*, that looks like this:

You select three image concepts that serve as your "secret question". In future logins, the site would present the imageshield and to login successfully, you would need to spot and type in the codes that appear on your previously chosen image concepts. The images and codes change, but the concept of the image stays the same. For eg. the imageshield will always have a picture of a bird or birds associated with the concept of a "bird" and a picture of some automobile associated with the concept of a "car" etc.

I think the idea of an OpenID is, in itself, an interesting experiment in online security. The imageshield at vidoop makes it seem even more futuristic. Someday, we will all be Neos and Trinitys of the online world and our password to virtual space will be a unique personal combination of the white rabbit, our own demons and perhaps a dilated concept of time.

Identity thefts would either be a thing of the past or identity thieves would have caught up to the technology and have succeeded in scanning minds of passers-by to mine information about their guarded mindscapes. For now, OpenIDs are just a weirdly cool way of shouting out your virtual name from digital rooftops to a pixelated universe.
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The De-Jargon/De-Geek Zone
(formerly known as the footnote):

What is OpenID: OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

More information here:
a) What is OpenID:

b) Wiki for OpenID:

c) *ImageShield: