I don't know if I have mentioned it in the past but, some months ago, one of my accounts from a Big Tech company was cancelled out of the blue. I called customer support multiple times and they all gave me the same answer: that I infringed the terms of service so my account had to be cancelled and there was no possibility of recovering it. I had no clue of what I did wrong, so I asked to please tell me what the infringement was, but their answer was that I should read the terms of service and try to deduce on my own what I might've done wrong. This wasn't just some rude employee having a bad day, they were mostly cordial and kind, I called several times and different agents told me the same thing, essentially, "go figure it out on your own".
With my account cancellation I lost all of what could be considered "digital goods", stuff that you pay for but that you do not physically own. It wasn't a lot of of stuff, but, still, it was stuff that I paid for and that suddenly disappeared without even an explanation.
I always knew that there was some risk on buying stuff that you don't have in your hard drive, that you don't have physical possession of, or that you cannot dispose of as you like, but I was naive enough to believe that something so draconian couldn't happen out of the blue for no good reason.
Doing some research it turns out that, in most cases, when you "buy" something out of these platforms you don't really own it, what you own is a license to access it, a license which can be revoked, no questions asked, at the will of the provider of the digital goods. The typical case is that of eBooks. Customers have complained that an eBook that they paid for suddenly disappeared from their library. And it turns out that the reason could be that the publisher decided to stop distributing that eBook on that particular platform or that the platform suddenly considered that the book was inappropriate for some reason, or whatever. And that's it, your "paid for" eBook suddenly disappears from your library and you don't even get a refund nor a notification informing you of what just happened.
I think it is still too soon for us as a civilization to grasp the consequences of these so-called digital goods and how will all this untangle in the future, with people "not owning anything and being happy". And what will happen with all those books, movies, etc... that suddenly disappear from the digital world and can no longer be found. I do know that this was a lesson for me not to buy anything you cannot hold in your hand or touch.
Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
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- mediatechnology
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Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
Excellent points.
I try to keep local copies of everything and have never bought an eBook or "bought" a streamed video.
Physical media is essential.
The recent scrub of the WayBack Machine is also chilling.
I try to keep local copies of everything and have never bought an eBook or "bought" a streamed video.
Physical media is essential.
The recent scrub of the WayBack Machine is also chilling.
Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
I have bought eBooks when I don't really want having another physical book. I already have too many books (more than 2000) and I usually don't buy a book that I only care about reading once or when paying full price for the hard-copy is not justified. But generally I try buying the real deal. I mean, as a thought exercise, what would happen if Jeff Bezos' grandchildren suddenly decide that the Kindle library won't be available anymore?mediatechnology wrote: ↑Thu Dec 05, 2024 12:44 pm Excellent points.
I try to keep local copies of everything and have never bought an eBook or "bought" a streamed video.
Physical media is essential.
The recent scrub of the WayBack Machine is also chilling.
But that is not the only problem, digital is practical but in no way is it lasting. I have very few digital photos dating more than 10 years back, either of myself or of someone else. All the photos I took during the first decade of the 00's are long gone, yet, the pictures that my parents took using film of my brother and I are still hanging on the wall or inside the family photo album. Sure, you can print your digital photos, but the truth is that seldom anyone does these days. What usually happens is that photos end up in that Pentium 4 laptop stored in the attic that no longer turns on.
The music platform I subscribe to (YouTube Music) has a lot of albums. However, I was surprised to find that an album that I used to listen regularly suddenly disappeared from the listings. I had to go to Amazon and buy the CD, something that I thought I wouldn't have to do anymore. Then I ripped the CD into my SSD and I can listen to the album whenever I like.
The Dead Internet Theory has been regarded as a myth or urban legend, even reaching a "conspiracy theory" grade of rejection. But, as it is often the case, the conspiracy theory is proving to be conspiracy truth as time goes by.
When it comes to cloud storage, I am looking into a NAS system. Aside from the fact that I really do not like having Microsoft or Google as the sole guardians of my files, the truth is that you could loose all your files if you stop paying the subscription for an extended period of time. I intend on backing everything up at home, although I would like to play it safe and have at least one trusty cloud storage service just in case. I have mostly migrated to Proton by now, although I still own OneDrive and Google Drive accounts. My email account, cloud storage, password manager, calendar, etc... is now part of my Proton subscription. Nothing is 100% secure, anonymous nor reliable, but I believe that Proton is as close as you can get. You still have to pay a modest fee every month, but I think it is worth it.
I have the most complete Proton package, which includes 1 TB of cloud storage, something like 15-20 email accounts, 10 simultaneous VPN connections, calendar, password manager, etc... and I pay something close to $14/mo. Compare that to Apple who wanted to charge me $17/mo just for 50 GB of iCloud storage....
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- mediatechnology
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Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
I have photos and other media elements on multiple machines. The laptops use external drives. The one Win7 "floortop" machine has big internal drives and usually has the master copies. Each laptop machine is a mirror copy and there is a backup in fire-proof storage. I use Total Commander to maintain file sync.AnalogJoe wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 4:48 pm
Sure, you can print your digital photos, but the truth is that seldom anyone does these days. What usually happens is that photos end up in that Pentium 4 laptop stored in the attic that no longer turns on.
Then I ripped the CD into my SSD and I can listen to the album whenever I like.
But, as it is often the case, the conspiracy theory is proving to be conspiracy truth as time goes by.
When it comes to cloud storage, I am looking into a NAS system.
I have mostly migrated to Proton by now, although I still own OneDrive and Google Drive accounts. My email account, cloud storage, password manager, calendar, etc... is now part of my Proton subscription.
I was blessed with being given the entire CD library of an AOR radio station after it changed formats. They're ripped to hard drive also mirrored. Originally 256/320K mp3 I need to go back and re-rip to flac since over 20 years has passed and drive capacity has expanded exponentially. I could program multiple music formats with my 6000+ songs.
Those that use the Kennedy-era CIA term "conspiracy theory" are often either lazy, ignorant or are deliberately using the term to delegitimize those that do their homework and speak the truth. It is a popular term with JR, crazydoc, living sounds and their arrogant ilk in "The Brewery" who have been shown over and over to be spectacularly wrong.
An NAS is a nice thing. Just make sure that if the controller fails that the internal drives are in a common Linux or NTFS file system. (Not sure I haven't ever seen one that was NTFS.) When I looked at this a few years ago some of them were oddball formats that couldn't be mounted on a Win or Linux machine and read. RAID is fine but the controller is a single point of failure. It might be better to purpose-build a headless small form-factor Linux machine into an NAS.
I have Proton accounts that I don't use because I don't trust them due to their affiliation with CERN and the World Economic Forum. Having said that their email system and UI is excellent. My "conspiracy theory" is that cloud storage is a honey-pot.
Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
I use FreeFileSync to keep the sync, it is available for all OS, including Linux. It includes something called RealTimeSync which can be set up to monitor specific folders and sync everything once a change is detected. It is awesome stuff.mediatechnology wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 5:50 pmI have photos and other media elements on multiple machines. The laptops use external drives. The one Win7 "floortop" machine has big internal drives and usually has the master copies. Each laptop machine is a mirror copy and there is a backup in fire-proof storage. I use Total Commander to maintain file sync.AnalogJoe wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 4:48 pm
Sure, you can print your digital photos, but the truth is that seldom anyone does these days. What usually happens is that photos end up in that Pentium 4 laptop stored in the attic that no longer turns on.
Then I ripped the CD into my SSD and I can listen to the album whenever I like.
But, as it is often the case, the conspiracy theory is proving to be conspiracy truth as time goes by.
When it comes to cloud storage, I am looking into a NAS system.
I have mostly migrated to Proton by now, although I still own OneDrive and Google Drive accounts. My email account, cloud storage, password manager, calendar, etc... is now part of my Proton subscription.
I was blessed with being given the entire CD library of an AOR radio station after it changed formats. They're ripped to hard drive also mirrored. Originally 256/320K mp3 I need to go back and re-rip to flac since over 20 years has passed and drive capacity has expanded exponentially. I could program multiple music formats with my 6000+ songs.
Those that use the Kennedy-era CIA term "conspiracy theory" are often either lazy, ignorant or are deliberately using the term to delegitimize those that do their homework and speak the truth. It is a popular term with JR, crazydoc, living sounds and their arrogant ilk in "The Brewery" who have been shown over and over to be spectacularly wrong.
An NAS is a nice thing. Just make sure that if the controller fails that the internal drives are in a common Linux or NTFS file system. (Not sure I haven't ever seen one that was NTFS.) When I looked at this a few years ago some of them were oddball formats that couldn't be mounted on a Win or Linux machine and read. RAID is fine but the controller is a single point of failure. It might be better to purpose-build a headless small form-factor Linux machine into an NAS.
I have Proton accounts that I don't use because I don't trust them due to their affiliation with CERN and the World Economic Forum. Having said that their email system and UI is excellent. My "conspiracy theory" is that cloud storage is a honey-pot.
In Linux I have to use Rclone to sync everything from and to the cloud. It is not very practical as it is a terminal non-gui application. There is a GUI developed by third parties, but it is garbage. I could set up Rclone in crontab so it executes periodically, however, the bisync capabilities crash constantly and you have to resync everything once that happens. So I am not comfortable letting it running in the background without knowing what is going on.
As to Proton being affiliated to CERN, I am aware of that. I wasn't aware, however, of their affiliation to the WEF. In any case, I believe Proton is the least of my problems compared to the rest of the stuff out there. And most of the security "experts" agree that Proton is one of the best alternatives.
With regards to the NAS. Using a small form-factor machine sounds like a great idea, I didn't think of that. Thanks for the suggestion. Only risk I see is having it plugged to the web as a server and being prone to attacks. I am no security expert nor web admin, and I honestly do not want to delve into the entire server security hassle, in which case I am sure I wouldn't do a good job either.
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- mediatechnology
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Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
For email I host my own on the forum and store's web server.
I also use Earthlink email (Mindspring domain actually) and have since 1999.
I haven't found any evidence of them reading my email or targeting advertising.
For web access to the small form-factor PC you might use gotomypc in the Win environment or see if there is a Linux alternative.
Or maybe setup a VPN to it rather than have it as a public-facing web server.
I live the hermit life so I don't often need to access files remotely.
When I do I usually pull up the files on my phone from the web servers.
I don't keep personal stuff on it but do retrieve construction documents.
My laptops have never left the house and it's been months since I opened the lid on my daily driver.
I use it more like a small form-factor machine.
I also use Earthlink email (Mindspring domain actually) and have since 1999.
I haven't found any evidence of them reading my email or targeting advertising.
For web access to the small form-factor PC you might use gotomypc in the Win environment or see if there is a Linux alternative.
Or maybe setup a VPN to it rather than have it as a public-facing web server.
I live the hermit life so I don't often need to access files remotely.
When I do I usually pull up the files on my phone from the web servers.
I don't keep personal stuff on it but do retrieve construction documents.
My laptops have never left the house and it's been months since I opened the lid on my daily driver.
I use it more like a small form-factor machine.
Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
Here is some evidence for you. According to Wikipedia Earthlink was sold to Trive Capital and here is what the article has to say about it:mediatechnology wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:32 pm For email I host my own on the forum and store's web server.
I also use Earthlink email (Mindspring domain actually) and have since 1999.
I haven't found any evidence of them reading my email or targeting advertising.
In early January 2019, Trive Capital acquired EarthLink for $330 million in cash from Windstream Holdings Inc. In 2021, Earthlink published a statement in which the company confirmed that customer's passwords can be read by its staff. Shortly later, the company deleted this statement without any clarification.
I definitely should look into that. Thanks.mediatechnology wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:32 pm For web access to the small form-factor PC you might use gotomypc in the Win environment or see if there is a Linux alternative.
Or maybe setup a VPN to it rather than have it as a public-facing web server.
I have several laptops that I use between home and work. I need to work in one of them and make sure that everything is synced to the other ones, otherwise I'll get to work just to find out that my entire night spend doing whatever was wasted on nothing.mediatechnology wrote: ↑Fri Dec 06, 2024 8:32 pm I live the hermit life so I don't often need to access files remotely.
When I do I usually pull up the files on my phone from the web servers.
I don't keep personal stuff on it but do retrieve construction documents.
My laptops have never left the house and it's been months since I opened the lid on my daily driver.
I use it more like a small form-factor machine.
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Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
I did a couple of Google searches and found out there are some Linux distributions (or 'distros', as the nerdy kids say) tailored specifically for NAS. The one that seems most promising so far is OpenMediaVault:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMediaVault
https://www.openmediavault.org/
I think that I will follow your idea, Wayne, of getting a small format PC and I will install that distro in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenMediaVault
https://www.openmediavault.org/
I think that I will follow your idea, Wayne, of getting a small format PC and I will install that distro in it.
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- mediatechnology
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Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
I'll take a look at that distro.
This is an excellent drive case: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D45F4DT7?th=1
I have six of them.
When buying drives make sure they use "CMR" (conventional magnetic recording) rather than "SMR" (shingled magnetic recording).
SMR eliminates the guard band between tracks and has to perform re-writes to correct the crosstalk.
There's a speed penalty with SMR.
The Seagate Barracuda drives are SMR; IronWolf are CMR.
The WD Blue series has both - check the model number.
This is an excellent drive case: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D45F4DT7?th=1
I have six of them.
When buying drives make sure they use "CMR" (conventional magnetic recording) rather than "SMR" (shingled magnetic recording).
SMR eliminates the guard band between tracks and has to perform re-writes to correct the crosstalk.
There's a speed penalty with SMR.
The Seagate Barracuda drives are SMR; IronWolf are CMR.
The WD Blue series has both - check the model number.
Re: Digital Goods Are No Goods At All
Why would you still use a HDD instead of a SSD? I am aware that there is a maximum number of read/write operations in SSDs before they fail and also that they have a certain lifetime, but HDDs are much slower and, in my experience, much more unreliable. They tend to damage more easily and are less resistant to mechanical shock. And the price difference these days between a good HDD and a SSD is not very significant.mediatechnology wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2024 12:48 pm I'll take a look at that distro.
This is an excellent drive case: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D45F4DT7?th=1
I have six of them.
When buying drives make sure they use "CMR" (conventional magnetic recording) rather than "SMR" (shingled magnetic recording).
SMR eliminates the guard band between tracks and has to perform re-writes to correct the crosstalk.
There's a speed penalty with SMR.
The Seagate Barracuda drives are SMR; IronWolf are CMR.
The WD Blue series has both - check the model number.
Is there a particular reason why you prefer HDDs?
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