Somebody suggested using Amazon EC2 to provide an incremental backup interface to S3. For the likes of rsync to be truly effective, you need to have an rsync program running near the data store. It struck me, you could use an EC2 instance with free, high-speed bandwidth to S3 to do exactly that.
Using S3fuse (currently down) I’m sure you could script something so users log in to the EC2 instance and then mount their S3 bucket locally. Then rsync would work pretty effectively I reckon.
Could even be an interesting business model.
Today I’ve decided I’m fed up with my current backup provider, rsync.net. The service they provide is pretty solid, I’ve been using it for a few months now. The main reason I chose them at $1.80 per Gb instead of Amazon at around $0.30 per Gb is the support. They guarantee to have a real, live, intelligent engineer answer my questions. That’s worth more than a few bucks a month.
However, the service of late has been abysmal. As soon as my questions got beyond “How do I plug my computer in”, it took 5 days to get a response to tell me there’s a problem with their system, it should be fixed soon. Another five days later, and still no response to my question “Will you tell me when it’s working?”.
Given that the support I thought I was getting is apparently a myth, time to switch I think. I also discovered that they won’t automatically expand my account. So if I need more space, I have to email them to ask for it. Bah.
Goodbye rsync.net, I’m afraid it’s been a little disappointing.
I read a fascinating post about Amazon’s new text stats today (thanks Seth). Amazon provide some cool statistics comparing the sentence length, word complexity and even words per dollar of books.
It’s interesting to note that in Steven’s (admittedly unscientific) comparison, the more popular books have fewer words per sentence and less complex words. I’m reassured that I’m not the only person who prefers simpler texts.
I didn’t make it past the first page of my brother’s dissertation because of the academic style. I realise it’s what’s expected, even required, of academic writing, but personally, I find it unbearable. Apparently the numbers agree, simplicity sells!
I was treated to quite an experience on Saturday night. We went to a club in downtown Guelph! It was quite something.
The place was filled with black guys standing around the dance floor, watching girls dancing and there seemed to be about 4 guys to every girl. The girls I was with were getting hit on left right and centre by big black dudes coming over and “handling” them.
Welcome to Canada! 
I’m considering buying a Canon SD1000 (IXUS 70). I saw it in a shop today for $279 CAD plus tax ($318). I decided to resist the impulse purchase, do some reading, and check the price online. Dell USA sells the camera for $165.99 USD while Dell Canada sells exactly the same product for $299 CAD.
Has nobody told Dell the Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar? The camera is 45% cheaper in the USA! I’m only 2 hours from the border! It’s outrageous.
Needless to say, I’ll be buying it in the states if at all.
There was some discussion on the BeWelcome developers mailing list recently about OpenID and passwords, encryption and so on. Today I received an email from UKReg (aka Fasthosts) to tell me that somebody may have stolen their customer data and may have access to the account passwords.
Fasthosts suggested I change my password. I couldn’t seem to log in, so I clicked the “Forgotten Password” link. They then sent me an email containing my password.
It struck me how ridiculously insecure that is. That means they store my password in plain text. They can look it up if they want to. That’s outrageous. In almost all systems, the password is stored in encrypted (technically hashed) form. If you lose your password, you can’t recover it, you need to create a new one.
Of course, the biggest problem with passwords is always the same. Damned users. It never fails to amaze me how many people use the same password for everything. Otherwise intelligent people, who damn well should know better.
So, go change your passwords. Even writing them all down in a book is still more secure than using the same password everywhere.
I’m currently on a train from Montreal to Toronto, using the onboard wireless internet access. It’s not super quick, but it’s a whole lot better than nothing!
The trains are pretty comfortable compared to the UK. The seats seem to be spaced a little further apart, so there’s a touch more leg room. There’s also one socket per seat, unlike GNER which provide one socket per 2 seats. So there’s no fighting over power points!
There are a few 2 facing 2 seats, but they don’t have centre tables, all the seats have tables that fold out of the arm. It actually works quite well, currently I’m sitting on one seat with my feet on the seat opposite.
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