I am … unhindered by talent

photo credit: Unhindered by Talent

Backups are good.

Everybody says so.

Really, Really Good.

So you’d think the University of Minnesota would be working to provide a reasonable on-line, off-site backup system for its folks. Unfortunately, their pricing structure seems to be from another planet where storage is, like, well, really … uh … expensive!

To quote from the relevant web page:

OIT-UDMS Backup pricing (as of 2/2008)

Storage used Cost per month
  <128GB $25
  128GB – 256GB $50
  256GB – 384GB $75

To calculate the cost of backup service, simply round up the amount of data you need backed-up to the nearest increment of 128GB and use the formula of $25/128GB/month multiplied by the retention period (30 day backup is 4X the primary data). Backup data can be held for up to 90 days. Incremental backups are run daily and that data is retained for 2 weeks. Full backups are run weekly and those backups are held for one month.

We have the additional options of 2 weeks, 30 days and 60 days if your requirements for retention are shorter.

Yup, that’s right. $25 a month for 128Gb of storage. I can buy 500 Gb hard drives for under $100, so I could buy 3 drives (1.5 Tb of storage) a year for he cost of their backup system. Mozy.com will backup an unlimited amount of data for $5/month for home users; not sure what their enterprise pricing is like, but I kind of doubt that they’re going to jump to the U’s pricing.

Bet the U doesn’t get a lot of takers at these prices. Bet their staff aren’t backing up nearly as much as they’d like, either. Hmmmm … a relationship worth exploring?

Related posts

• Transforming our thoughts about teaching (2)
• They’re only…what…20 years late? (1)

photo credit: Leucippus

Cory Q of Monkey River Town suckered WeatherGirl and I into forming a fantasy team for the Tour de France. We’ve never done something like this before, and had to do it in a hurry, so I’m guessing that we will not be stellar performers :-). Still, it was a lot of fun sifting through the participants putting our team together, and will make it even more interesting to watch the stages. Now we’ll actually care who comes in 11th in a sprint!

Read the rest of this entry »

Related posts

• Wishing Jenny well (0)
• So, so cool looking — but I can’t play yet! (3)

aller à bicyclette, originally uploaded by Summa for Strings.

The mighty Tour de France started yesterday. We’ve been recording it, but haven’t actually seen any of it yet (unpacking, etc.). Soon, though, there will be many hours of bike racing in our lives!

Thanks to “Summa for Strings” for this amazing photo!

Related posts

• No related posts.

Sorry for the lack of activity here - an EPSRC grant with Riccardo came through, which is big happy news. The downside is that there’s a ton of research work to be done in a very short period of time. We were lucky enough to have Ellery Crane visiting for the last two weeks, and the two of us did some pretty massive hours while he was here. We got a bucket of really good work done was he here; we built several large new systems and got some early results that suggest probably at least a couple of papers.

I’ll try to post at least sporadically in the upcoming weeks, but I suspect things are likely to be light here well into the summer.

Related posts

• You know, basic editing and lit review = teh good (3)
• Wrapping one’s head around the data (0)

In a well written and thoughtful endorsement that (not surprisingly) focuses on tech related issues, they’ve gone for Obama and McCain (with a strong preference for Obama between the two).

Obviously technical issues aren’t the only important issues facing the country, and silicon valley tech issues aren’t necessarily always the same as general science issues. Nothing was said about the war in Iraq, for example, and while they wisely include things things like math and science education in their focus issues, there’s no mention of the continuing struggle over the stain of creationism in that education.

Not perfect, but a thoughtful summary of positions on an important set of issues.

Related posts

• We have to help them understand: Science matters! (1)
• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)

While I realize that this is little more than incoherent link propagation (unlike my normally focussed prose-o-wonderment), hopefully pulling some of this fluff from the mighty tubes that connect us all will help clarify our various connections and communications.

A couple that our amazing progeny sent my way:

• How I failed the Turing test: How would you convince a random new IM contact that you were a person and not a bot? (Of course might wonder why you’d bother, but we’ll ignore that for now.)
• RIAA Declares Using Brain to Remember Songs is Criminal Copyright Infringement (satire): Fairly amusing piece on the “Music industry moguls remain willfully clueless” thread. I love how the authors felt the need to include “satire” in the title. Are we really that dim?

I’m not sure where I got this pointer from, but Bruce Schneier is exhorting people to “Steal This Wi-Fi” over on Wired. In a world where people expend tons of energy securing their wireless networks (and ISPs often require it of their customers), one of our major security experts chooses to keep his home wireless open. “To me, it’s basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea.”

And in a vaguely related piece on security, a post from John Naughton on the dangers of publishing your bank details. Jeremy Clarkson, arch-conservative, petrol head, and (much to my dismay) highly amusing Top Gear presenter decided that the woo-haa was way overblown regarding the recent loss by British government officials of financial details of millions of people. So he published his bank details in his Sun column. According to the BBC, however, “Clarkson admitted he was ‘wrong’ after he discovered a reader had used the details to create a £500 direct debit to the charity Diabetes UK.” Oops.

Well, my tubes are definitely clearer. Thanks for the Q-tip.

Related posts

• “Poor, stupid deluded Sony BMG” (1)
• What goes around apparently keeps going around (1)

We’re up in Preston with WeatherGirl’s Mum for the holidays. Bandwidth here at her house is limited and at least mildly awkward, so there probably won’t be much posting from here.

The snow shot is from Morris a couple of years ago - the word is that they’re definitely gonna have snow on the ground for Xmas. It’s quite cold for the UK up here in Preston, but nothing on what it’s like in Minnesota. It’s a bit below freezing at night and heavy frost sometimes lasting the whole day.

Related posts

• We can all make history come alive (0)
• New ways to bore you with our holiday photos (1)

There are times when you see things that are almost impossible to believe. Your brain vehemently resists the obvious interpretation because it’s just so bizarre. This, for me, was one of those times.

Pointer courtesy of Mr. Naughton.

It might be worth mentioning that I first saw this (and posted it) without actually hearing the sound. (I was on a machine that didn’t have any speakers on it.) In some ways it was even better silent, esp. the first time.

Related posts

• You have to either laugh or cry (and I’ll help you do both) (0)
• You folks are super generous! (2)

The mother of a good friend was just diagnosed with pancreatic cancer (Wikipedia, National Cancer Institute). They don’t know much about her situation yet (she’s down at the Mayo Clinic undergoing tests), but pancreatic cancer generally has a very poor prognosis, so this is likely to be a tough time for them all.

Our thoughts are with you.

Related posts

• Victory!!! (4)
• The pictures I’m not taking (0)

w00t! There’s a group pushing for a presidential science debate focused on the many scientific issues that face us nationally and worldwide. Their call:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Health and Medicine, and Science and Technology Policy.

I’m all signed up, and definitely encourage others to visit ScienceDebate2008.com and do the same. I seriously doubt there is a single major issue these days that doesn’t have a significant technological or scientific component. Yet there’s precious little discussion of science in our political dialogue, and candidates regularly display an ignorance of science that is at best extremely worrying.

To be honest, I have doubts about this happening, at least right away, but we’ve got to start demanding this sort of accountability on science and technology. Every journey begins with a single step web site…

Oh, and they really need a badge that people like me can include in posts and sidebars and such. Anyone want to make one?

Related posts

• No, I really do think we need a science debate (0)
• We have to help them understand: Science matters! (1)