At the time of my signup, they were the cheapest, unlimited backup provider I could find. Other unlimited sources like Mozy or Carbonite charged a bit more per month. I would have to say that Mozy and Carbonite might win a user interface or usability contest. Crashplan really could use a designer’s touch on many aspects of their application and process.

Lastly, I must say, it costs a mite to get started and takes a couple weeks of uploading over consumer internet connection speeds, but it’s nice to have all data I’d rather not lose stashed away remotely.

• A desktop or laptop of any kind
• A linux server

Applications used

• Backuppc on the linux server (there’s a package for it on most distributions)
• DeltaCopy on Windows XP (you can use rsync directly on Mac and Linux desktops)

Basically, install both, and configure to taste. Consult the documentation on both sites.

However, there are some tricks that made life easier. For example, you might want to configure DeltaCopy to be the rsync server on the Windows computer. If you use Mac or Linux, you can do it any way you like. I found making DeltaCopy the rsync server on Windows to be easiest. This way, you can use the ‘rsyncd’ option in backuppc to “pull” files from “shares” you create using DeltaCopy. The other way around didn’t seem to work as smoothly as I’d liked.

By default, backuppc “wakes up” every hour, on the hour, and looks for changes on it’s hosts. Making this faster definitely makes it easier to catch a laptop user online for a backup. The real beauty of backuppc is that it works similarly to rsync (even moreso when it’s using rsync). Incremental backups save large amounts of space.

What kind of consulting would you happen to do?

But really, don’t paint it on your company trucks. Oh, and camera phones are awesome.

Cool, I won’t hop out of the ship to touch the sign now. Thanks.

(Thanks to Jeff for the screenshot)

I was grabbing a cart for a spree at the local Fry’s when I noticed that something had been printed on the backside of the child seat flap. You know what I’m talking about. That flat plastic, spring-loaded flap that keeps your groceries in the child seat and is a minor pain to manage with a squirming child? Anyhow, I digress. On the back of this flap was about 5-6 lines of an Arizona law (A.R.S for those in the know). And I paraphrase:

“It’s illegal to remove this, or any other, shopping cart from the premesis.”

Was I being old fashioned when I thought that was covered under the “don’t take things that aren’t yours” laws? The only individuals this might affect is the homeless or the already illegal members of our society. Many of which I’m sure are law abiding citize…I mean, members of our society, but the rest already disregard laws and those who follow them.

Whether it’s foolish grocery store lobbyists coercing local lawmakers to enact silly laws such as this, or just bored lawmakers causing trouble and inflating our government even more, it’s dumb. Plain and simple dictation of morality upon people with enough confusion when it comes to right and wrong. Both the people taking the carts and the police that enforce our laws know that taking such a shopping cart is wrong. It’s stealing plain and simple.

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