You make a great point about CD-Rs, I guess I should have broadened my statement to "cheap-ass backup solutions from the 90s", not just floppies and tape.

The error rate from other sources (e.g. on the network copy) is far higher. If your backups are corrupt, it's almost certain they were corrupt day 1.

Test your backups after you make them: it's a cheap and easy 99% solution.

I've investigated hundreds of cases of "bit rot" over the years in my job, and other than very weak magnetic media (or CD-Rs as someone upthread pointed out), corrupt backups were always corrupt when written. Had the poor SOB only verified his backups day 1, he'd not be in a world of shit. Every single time.

Well, I did backup software and hardware for nearly 20 years. But I can't substantiate that with a link.

I didn't say it was better. I just said returning to post-war style unionism isn't the answer. To elaborate a bit further:

The original labor movement that took place during the early 20th century gave us two pillars we take for granted: 40 hour work weeks and minimum wage, along with many other regulations.

There's the closest thing to an answer. Why? Because these regulations are enforced at relatively low cost. In theory, if you work with the system you can get these rules applied fairly. Employers who systematically violate labor laws *do* get punished.

Here's the best part: I never pay any dues for that, just taxes.

You might even go so far as to say it's... wait for it... a "single payer union". Hey, it's good for health care, it should be great for labor care too right? We should get rid of all the pesky private labor insurance and have ONLY the "single payer union". BTW, this also demolishes the Republican argument that you can't have a government player and private players in the same space.

IMHO, the only good strike is a general strike. The only good union is a caucus within a party. The only fair contract is a universal contract for all workers doing a particular job.

And, to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs: tenure and seniority should never be allowed to factor into the contract. Contracts should only establish minimum standards for compensation. Meritocracy should rein above the floor.

Look at the last bastion of unionism in America: the public sector. If anything, it robs the working class. The working class is paying taxes for people who have contracts where seniority and tenure are involved.

Bitrot is a myth in modern times. Floppies and cheap-ass tape drives from the 90s had this problem, but anything reasonably modern (GMR) will read what you wrote until mechanical failure.

The key therefore is to verify as you write. Usually, verifying a sample of a few GB will let you know if everything went OK. DO your backups with checksums of some sort. A modern tape drive and backup software will do that automatically, and let you schedule a verify automatically as part of backups (2 TB? That's 1 tape - might want to consider that), though ideally you should verify a tape on a different drive than the one you wrote it on.

For disk-based backups, local or cloud, I strongly recommend archiving to a format with checksums (RAR etc) over some sort of raw file copy. Especially for anything going over the network: RAR a volume/file set locally first, then upload, then test the archive.

If you have a superstitious fear of bitrot, you can always do some random sampling of archive integrity, and keep multiple historical copies of files just in case (e.g., don't just delete backup N-1 when you do backup N, do a rotation scheme).

Modern mustangs are quite reliable, and get remarkable gas mileage for the power they make. The downside is the econobox ride and interior, but that's the problem with ricers in the first place. I'll stick with my V8 sport/luxury sedan - it won't win on a race track, but it's plenty fast on the street, and it's a vastly superior car for bumper-to-bumper 30MPH traffic in the rain.

Did you read the "get out of a snow drift" part? Once you're stuck and trying to move 3 feet, getting the sand and shovels out of the trunk if you're the prepared sort, the physics are different. Much like the way wide tires are better on the road, but narrow tires are better in deep stuff.

Yup, that's the difference between a sports car and a GT cruiser.

Right, sure, there's still demand.

And that demand would be fulfilled by Japanese, Korean, or possibly Chinese manufacturers who have their shit together rather than the decaying and bloated corpse that is Detroit. And it most certainly wouldn't be a situation where "startups fill the void".

Buying up GM's old plants? Why the hell would Nissan, Toyota, Kia, or SAIC want old and busted facilities with only wealthy union workers to hire in a state with strong union laws, in a country with a working EPA? Shipping costs aren't that much. And now that China has come online, all the parts that GO INTO the car are produced in China anyway, so you either ship the car over as a whole or ship it over in parts.

It would most certainly be an "end of the world of USA car manufacturing" scenario. Which is arguably already on it's way. Hey, you're looking at this problem from the perspective of small business vs big business. There's a LOT that can learned from that. But in this case it's a matter of INTERNATIONAL competition where the capabilities of the nation are involved and it has close ties to national security. As in, can we build tanks and planes and bombs sort of stuff. This is a little detail that people tend to ignore, but our civilan manufacturing plants are all viewed as emergency war-machine makers by the top brass and people that play the international politics game. That's less important with nukes on the table, but China desperately wants to be able to wave their dick around in the form of a fully capable military power.

You're just not looking at the big picture.

Unions provided higher wages back then.

Unions provided higher wages for a few people back then. The system was unsustainable and inefficient. It was fantastic for the immediate post-war generation in the US. As other countries rebuilt their manufacturing base, we began to see the downside. The 1970s were the transition for all that. 70s cars were absolutely awful in terms of quality.

It's easy to point to a high paying union job and say the union did good. It's harder to point to all the other regular Joes who got lemons in their driveways because it was considered acceptable behavior to show up drunk on the job and just bolt a few things together before taking another break.

If you really want to help labor, forget about the unions. Instead, establish fair wages for various job classifications via regulation. Of course that doesn't work under free trade, so you'd need to bring back the good 'ol tariff to cancel out the sweat shop effect.

There is no easy fix.

We had some computers in high school. We had many of them in college.

In both settings, the lecture was actually very important. The lectures were about algorithms. Because these were elective programs (or perhaps met an elective requirement for an engineering degree) most of the students did well. Even the ones who struggled with it were at least highly motivated. Even people like myself who had done a lot of coding outside the classroom struggled with the material at times, so it was very challenging. I had the misfortune to take the 100 level course the last year before they switched from Pascal to C.

For some strange reason, pointers were harder in Pascal than C; but that might be because it was my first exposure to memory in a HLL (I had experience with 6502 assembly, purely self taught). The entire 1st semester was to write a Logo interpreter in Pascal. You built it piece-by-piece each week. If you couldn't complete a piece bug-free, you were graded on how close you got and permitted to use the instructor's code as a starting point for the next week. If you were really good, you'd have your very own interpreter; but most of us ended up with a patched instructor's version.

Anyway, I digress. The instructors had to know the material. It wasn't a lot of typing. It was algorithms and the language was just a tool used to make the machine execute the algorithms.

I feel like a got a quality CS education when I was in the CS department even though I wasn't a CS major. Something tells me these kids aren't in for such a good experience...

For all that, you'll still be in a ricer.

Most cars can't get out of a snow drift with the traction control on. Sometimes you need wheelspin.

My V8 may only be 5.6L, but it will still leave a patch if I let it (realistically, it probably has more power than any of the 60s muscle cars, given the way that measuring power has changed over the decades). I've dione it by accident before in reverse (there's no traction control in reverse).