Like your thinking. More than once I wanted to run the new app with my past user environment and was thwarted, whether the OS was Windows, Linux or Mac OSX. It is frustrating not to be able to. Developers uncouple please.

I have needed to run old versions of software after a new version came out. As long as I can control where to install the application, I usually have no problem. However if the install process locks me into a specific area, than I know, down the road, I will not have this capability.

With Windows 7, PaintShop Pro (v10 I believe) attempted to force me to install in a specific area, however I figured a way around it, put it in a /prog area on a USB device. After that I was able to run PSP from any Windows box I wanted to without problems. I plan to do similar things with my tablets, use the micro SD card for both applications and data. No way should I be forced to connect to the internet to do something.

Because of the above scenario, as much as I loved PSP, I moved away from it simply because they attempted to force me to install in a specific pro-windows way/place. I was able to run an old version of PSP from that computer, in addtion to the new version. I figure I bought it, I should be able to install and run as I want. With the writing on the wall to PSP's stated direction, I left behind one of my favorite tools. GIMP is not as friendly, but extremely powerful.

Still see this as a big issue for my opensource tablet. It is frustrating. I no longer feel sorry fof those that lock themselves into proprietary hardware for an embedded device, whether it be a handheld or tablet. Opensource tools and products are the answer.

After reading (#46516745) above and some of the comments related to that post, the only thing I can think to do is make sure I can restore my tablet from scratch, document how to do it as I won't remember in a few months, and that would at least give me the capabilty to reinstall my android tablet from scratch should I get caught in this type of upgrade fiasco.

If your handheld / tablet uses proprietary pieces and parts, you will be denied the abilty to wipe it clean and reinstall from scratch (via the micro SD card slot) if necessary. In that case the fault is yours as open source, non-proprietary solutions are available, but some comapnies want to force you into only pay them for everything and anything model. Best to avoid their hardware/software unless you enjoy paying away your hard earned money.

Yours was the best of the bunch (minus formatting html tags), though I enjoyed reading about the trials and tribulations of punch tape vs punch cards vs tape/dat backup systems. The biggest problem I had many years ago was using a dat format system that I could not longer purchase hardware for. So I had tapes, but no way to read them. That taught me a lesson. Never use a media that I might not be able to read from 10 years from today. Thus I only backup on hard disks today.

I agree that to backup music, videos and other static content that has been downloaded via the internet (and not personally created) is a waste of time and space. As you pointed out, with even a throttled cable connection you can download this fairly quickly. So never waste time backing it up. Totally agree with you.

Now the one exception to video, pictures and music, are those that you create yourself. For your own personal pictures and personally created video. That needs to be backed up and I would suggest a harddrive (or multiple hard disks) for this purpose.

If you work in the video / movie industry creating content, obviously this comment does not apply to you...check into creating your own Linux video sever farm for while-you-sleep-rendering and a homemade Linux SANs like this Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage. You will have to learn some Linux to do this, but it would be well worth it, if you have the need. This article should help you, Thoughts about this DIY-Thumper and storage in general

For home users not in an industry creating massive videos, the next few paragraphs should cover you. Give thoughts to what you really need and why. Don't back up anything you do not have too. Like Software, Operating Systems, only focus on the data you create.

Plan your locations for different types of data, since you can label (mount point) your directory whatever you want. You could have one for video, one for audio (music), one for non picture images (your digital camera) and one for everything else. If you have the need, perhaps a DB directory as well. This would look as follows:

/video/ ~ for downloaded video, not home movies, never backed up (this will be your largest directory for most)
/music/ ~ for downloaded music, not self created, never backed up (you could write this to DVR or copy to a USB thumb drive if you want, the files are NOT that big. A 64GB thumb drive costs less than $30 on sale. Get a Micro USB adapter and only purchase micro SD cards and get very large ones. I use to use 8GB in my Nokia N800, now my zareason ZT2 Tablet has a 32GB micro SD card in it. Since I am using it for books, PHP development and research only, it will take a very long time to fill up.)
/myvideo/ ~ personally made video, back it up
/mymusic/ ~ personally created music, back it up
/images/ ~ digital images from your digital camera, back it up
/db/ ~ custom database stuff, back it up
/data/ ~ everything else, back it up

For the majority of you reading this, from /myvideo/ to /data/ (five different directories) will easily fit on one 500GB drive. If you are smart and compress it when you backup, you can probably fit a months worth of backups on that 500GB drive if not more. Linux comes with built in compression / backup commands and you can use PKZIP (or other compression program) for Windows to compress your data sizes and make your backup space go further. Even more if your backup method / scripts are smart enough to do a full once per week and than incrementals after that. Though today, its probably just as easy to do fulls each time and not full with incremental backups.

As long as you do not let any of the above drives / directories grow larger than your backup hard drive, you will not have a problem creating the backups and if necessary restoring files from those backups. The number of hard drives you need would only depend upon your rotation / backup needs. Thus after a month, you could potentially re-use a hard drive.

Only the data you need from day to day, week to week, month to month, needs to be backed up. And unless you are doing something with really BIG data this backup will NOT approach 20TB in the near future. Perhaps 1TB if you save allot of stuff, though that would surprise me...you would have to be in the 1% of home users to hit 1TB. Most home users will be hard pressed to fill up a 500GB drive with data only, no videos, no music. If compressed, most home users would not fill up a 500GB drive with a month of backups.

The key to the plan is to limit the size of your data in any one location to less than the size of your backup device (500GB, 1TB, 2TB). If you use 500GB hard disks to back up your data (hot swappable) than each of those data drives should be limited to less than 500GB.

Get a HDDRACK5 from Sans Digital ($29.99 per). Its a 5 bay rack that can be used with SATA drives straight off your computer. Simply keep at least one bay for backups and make sure to limit the size of your data on all your other disks to less than the size of your backup drive, 500GB, 1TB or 2TB should do nicely. And you are good to go. Some hardware configuration is required. If you do not want to do this, there are $200 - $500 plus options for you, search.

Still you do not waste backup space backing up any content that you do NOT create yourself.

And since net neutrality is in jeapordy due to the recent court cases, should the cable providers institute broadband caps as they have always wanted to do, even tried a few times, but supposedly say they won't...yea right, not buying it. You will not be forced to pay extra charges because your backup is in your home with you.

The through the internet backup tools are great today, I just have zero faith that the cable providers will not add in a cap one day, especially now that Time Warner and Comcast are going to merge. If caps hit and you are backing up over the internet, good luck.

For offsite backups you could rotate a drive out of your house to your safety deposit box or the home of a family member, just in case. Those fireproof lock cases are cheap at the local business store and will hold more than one SATA drive.

As others have pointed out, as your data grows in size, the time it takes to restore from backup grows as well. Ultimately as are local data grows, the time it takes to backup and restore will become the major impediment to the viability of your backup system.

Most importantly, whatever backup system you decide upon, practice restoring your data a couple of times per year. Better that, thant to find out after the fact your data did not get backed up correctly. You honestly do not know if you have not tried to restore, if your backup system works or not. This is more common than you realize. Test your restore before relying on it.

Thus a full restore, worst case scenario is:

Restore operating system (can you do this for your handheld or tablet? if not your backups may be useless.)
Restore software from source
Create directory structure you use
Restore data.

Hope this helps many of you.

For all those that contributed the information and humor about punch tape, magnetic tape, punch cards, dat, etc.. you all made my day. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. The only media I did not use was punch tape. Also I never punced core, though one of my professors in college did. Should have asked him how he backed up that punched core. LMAO. Wonder if it beat the tape cassettes that came with the Radio Shack Model I...probably not.

Remember how fast the floppy disk drive in the Radio Shack Model III seemed...also too funny. The tape system that I could not easily get was a Sytos tape backup system, worked great with OS/2 1.3 EE and OS/2 Warp, until the Sytos hardware died on me. At that point I was not going to waste more money on that backup system.

With Linux I simply use ls -alFR (as root user) from root (/):

login as root ( sudo or su - root, depending on how you have it setup)

cd / get to the root directory of that machine and/or drive

ls -alFR > /dirname/yymmdd-ls-alF.txt where yy is 14 for 2014, mm is 03 for March and dd ps 13 for today or this

I I had multiple drives, I would put one of these commands in a script, one for each drive and put the drive name after the date in the name in the filename to differentiate one text file listing from another.

The added plus is if a rootkit gets put on your machine and you have taken the time to get to know what files are put where on your machine, you will find that rootkit.

With Windows 8 requirement of a license by the proprietary hardware in order to perform a simple Linux install, is wrong. Its real bad. Just say NO to proprietary hardware.

Re-purposing a computer for One Laptop per Child or some other education use is why I buy all my hardware (PC, laptop and tablet) from Linux ONLY vendors. I figure I can always purchase a Windows license if I want one, however down the road that Linux hardware will not require a Windows license to run Linux because of some stupid proprietary chipsets in the hardware.

While there are many Linux only vendors, my favorite is ZaReason. System76 is another one, but they seem to focus on only one or two Linux distros, where the ZaReason techs will put on many more. Loving Debian lately and plan to play with Arch down the road.

Do yourself a favor, avoid any vendor that focuses on Windows and buy Linux hardware and if you really must have the latest version of Windows, purchase a license for your better LINUX hardware. At least it can run Windows without hassles, the converse is no longer true.

A Windows 8 device no longer runs Linux without hassles, best to avoid it for this reason alone.

Anyone know if this was how NBA player, Lebron James, Samsung was wiped? Its been covered on CNBC's SqwakonStreet today. For those that had not heard, King James basically tweeted the quote above, yesterday(3/12) at 5:03PM, and later erased the tweet. Guessed he realized as a "Famous Samsung Endorser", that might not look great.

End result, his phone was restored...when they announced this I was wondering when his last backup was taken and how many daysold it might have been.

From a German Twitter user, Shibumi @Sh1bumi #Backdoor in #Samsung Smartphones http://www.golem.de/news/samsu... poster, (thank you Google Translate):

That is exactly what I was thinking it could be used for, to wipe the device.

Over the years I have been both a Comcast and Time Warner Internet customer in way more than 3 different cities. Avoid them if possible. No fun paying $10 more for more bandwidth and not seeing your bandwidth increase. Thanks to DD-WRT you see your actual bandwidth in real time.

Everyone should learn how to access websites they deem critical via that websites IP address alone. Its simple enough if you know the IP address, which can be discovered via the commands nslookup, dig and traceroute (tracert for you windows users). To learn more, google any of those commands and learn. Once you know the IP address using this in your browser's Location Bar (some browser installations turn off the browser's location bar, but you can turn it back on...if not use a better browser):

If they (cable company) will not provide you with only a cable modem, go with another provider. You want it to be nothing but a simple modem. No Wifi, no firewall, no router. Then add your own firewall/router that you control 100%.

If you must use cable:

Cable Modem (no Wifi, no DNS) + DD-WRT enabled firewall/router ~ is your best option.

If your broadband is symmetrical, not an up to bandwidth lie, there is no business incentive to restrict, limit, throttle and reduce a customer's bandwidth perpetuating the scarcity myth lie related to Internet access. There are less than 30 FTTH communities in the USA where a residential customer can purchase symmetrical Internet bandwidth today. Thankfully more are being planned. Except in the 14 states where the Cable companies have gotten politicians to enact laws preventing competition and FTTH.

To learn more about nslookup, dig and configuring your DNSsee this Google Developer's web page. There are command examples on that page, enjoy.

Was reading the back and forth and while interesting, the biggest problem are two fold:

1) Abuse and misuse ~ with the advent of all the FEMA data collection centers that many Americans deny exist or are unware of, no way do many of us trust that this would not be abused and misused. As others have stated, it would be utilized to silence speech that one group did not agree with, forget about freedom.

2)This feature however well intended would take the control out of the hands of the owner who purchased the device.

A last thought, you stated above:

Such a mechanism would not be able to be turned on and restored should the need arise. Seems like it would cost more problems than it would be worth. I have paid $500 for a new cellphone to avoid the monthly contract with my provider (and was glad I did as I had to churn when they put charges on my bill that they refused to remove after I proved to them that I had never made those calls, ever) and I would have been real upset that I now had a very expensive paperweight. No thank you.

At least with my $299 ZaReason ZaTab ZT2, I can use the micro SSD slot to boot up Linux and restore the device, or even put on another Linux distro other than Android should I desire it. 4 core CPU, 8 Core GPU, 2MB RAM, 8GB internal storage, 32GB micro SD card, 10.1" IPS 1280x800 display and best of all full root access, Ah freedom!

I applaud you for backing up your iPhone to you other Mac devices just in case. I should have tested that when I had an iPhone and MacBook Pro.

I find it ironic and funny when you write

That it would be Apple that would be most likely to remotely erase your device, if anyone. For instance if you misplaced or lost your device. Probably why you do not use iCloud. I just find the whole thing ironic and funny.

Since the platform is not open, how would you initiate the restore if your device was wiped clean and would not boot up? Not making fun, seriously curious. I know I can use a micro SSD card in my Android, is their a USB slot or micro SSD card slot in the iPhone? Must be.

I hope they teach about compound interest in the Savings and Interest portion of that class.

When I saw the word scarcity, warning bells went off. Too often people are told something is scarce when it is not. Simply because scarcity is used to drive up prices without reason throughout history. Enron among others comes to mind.

With economics, I hope they emphasize the supply side! Trickle down emphasized demand and we are living that wet dream now...its what devastated the supply side by destroying the middle class that purchased our goods and services in greater quantities than a few wealthy individuals. Good paying (living wages) jobs that increase the number of consumers is exactly what will solve this problem. I am sure I am not alone at being sick of this race to the bottom that right to work for less has created throughout the nation. As Greece, Turkey and Europe have taught us, austerity does not work, so why are the majority of our politicians going along with the banks and pushing us there?

Bet they will not teach that to the kids! At least teach them the power of compounding and the economic sense of securing a job with a living wage so you have a chance at investing, saving and reaching your goals. At least that.

If you do not have either dd-WRT, OpenWRT or tomato firmware running on an enabled firewall/router you honestly do not know what you actual throughput, bandwidth wise, is.

If your provider is a cable company, I am 100% certain that is much lower than what you think based on my first hand experience. I am also 100% certain that its much lower than their up to promise.

If my 20Mb/2Mb and 16Mb/2Mb up to promise was throttled to less than 300Kbps/30Kpbs and even as low as 101Kbps/20Kbps, I shutter to think how low it would be throttled if the service promise was only up to 2Mb/1Mb.

If a cable internet provider throttles service, 100% of them throttle, to less than 756Kbps, technically their service is no longer broadband per the FCC. How is this not Fraud? Too bad they will not enforce this and help us consumers out.

The reality is if you got the full bandwidth 100% of the time of even 2Mb/1Mb, you would be well over 90% better-off, than all cable internet providers in the US market today based on my personal experience using cable in 3 different cities across the US. Probably approaching better-off than 99% of the cable internet providers. I am sure there is some cable provider who has enough competition somewhere that gives the full 2Mb/1Mb, so I will give you 1%, but ONLY 1%.

The pipe did not open larger when I ordered the additional $10 per month burst mode either. I checked this in 2 of the three cities. So do not waste your money.

Until you have a supported firewall/router running the opensource firmware, you simply do not know.

Actually I have had multiple cable internet providers who promised 20Mb/2Mb, yet my dd-WRT enabled firewall/router showed that my actual bandwidth in real time was 300Kb/40Kb or 101Kb/20Kb 80% to 90% of the time. I would have loved 2Mbp/1Mbps. I was paying $50 per month for that throttled and limited bandwidth.

Where I am now has DSL, I pay less than $20 per month and while the advertised speed is lower than cable, the actual speed is much higher than throttled cable and I love it.

I would still switch to FTTH if I could get it, however no way will I ever be a cable internet provider while I live at this location. And when I move, I will purposefully move to one of the less than 30 communities that have symmetrical FTTH, simply because they have no business incentive to limit my upstream bandwidth, thus my streaming content will never stutter, stop or buffer.

No one will probably see this as your comment got rated -1, however with Net Neutrality in the news, your point is very valid.

You switch to another provider. Good chance DSL and FTTH providers will not do this anyway.

If you have no alternatives, than you encrypt the message and use a VPN tunnel to prevent the provider from knowing what you are doing, thus they are unable to charge you for it. Someone will put up a server that will provide you a wrapper that will obsfucate your encrypted message, thus they will not know if you are using IM or VoIP.

Heck, with Net Neutrality in jeopardy, better learn how to do this sooner rather than later.

Also to get around the DNS salting that will cripple some ranges of IPs, better know the exact IP address for the server so you do not need to resolve the DNS address in order to use the service.

If all this fails, string up two tin cans and a string as your screwed anyway.

Time to buy some soup! ;-)

It does not require a login, yet. My guess is that in order to monetize it and tie in Advertisers, a Facebook login will be required shortly.

For years many of us have been stating how SMS should be free as all the SMS traffic could fit in the spaces in between other traffic, say cellular alone. This is why its laughable that cellular users will pay upwards of $30 per month to add in unlimited text messaging to their plans.

I would be willing to pay $1.00 for unlimited text messaging, why not. Or better yet, put messaging on my own server on the Internet and use it to raise awareness for something more profitable.

I agree with your thoughts on FTTH or no FTTH should increase or decrease prices respectively. In fact they do and here is your proof: It typically costs between $1,500 and $3,000 to put in FTTH and adds $5,000 to the value of the home per this article. If that article does not load, this one will...FTTH adds $5,000 to price of a home.

In reality it is worth way more in economic development and jobs for your community.

Since real estate can be negotiated, feel free to take $5,000 off the price of any home that does not have FTTH. The worse they can say is NO.

Better yet move to one of the less than 30 communities in the USA that has symmetrical FTTH. These communities have more jobs, more prosperity and absolutely no incentive to throtlle / limit your internet broadband in any way.