Hard-drives are far more fragile and error-prone than computer users imagine. From my survey amongst friends and colleagues, it appears that almost nobody retains a remote copy of personal data. If errors were ever to strike, the result would be devastating. I have seen people losing their in-progress Ph.D. thesis, Masters dissertation and work documents. All it takes to prevent such tragedies is one of the following routines:

• Backup on CDR.
• Backup using a remote FTP server. To store only the recent differences, search by the last modified field.
• Free software packages like Rsync.
• Occasional hard-drive to hard-drive copy/mirror (volume sharing, redundancy).

Many of us undervalue the amount of data which is available owing to technology. Eavesdropping became only a time investment issue in a world where every event is recorded with the aid of brute-force. As an example, from the month of December I have a 20+ MB text file which contains everything one needs to know. Webmasters do not bother investigating such files and neither do I. I only suggest that everyone becomes aware of the following:

In cases where curiosity pushes its limits or even wrong-doing is considered, someone, somewhere will be able to retrace your steps. In this cyber-space where privacy is compromised, always be cautious and remember which Internet domain you go under.

Example: Whatever you search Google for will become visible to others; not only to Google employees, but also to sites you subsequently enter. Familiarise yourself with the rules of the ‘game’. Be suspicious.

Aren’t we all tired of so-called news that bring us stories about broken homes? Something in the minds of the public yearns for trouble and pain in the life of a celebrity. Indeed Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston split up, but are they not entitled to privacy? Much of the media sank to low levels and reported this.

Some excellent spam advice was passed on to me by a technology-savvy client at work. Because it has been exceptionally successful, I would like to share it:

Set up distinct E-mail accounts that are intended for (at most):

• Colleagues, family and friends
• Mailing lists
• Newsgroups
• Public enquiries, e.g. directories, Web pages

Additionally, if you can have a catch-all account, give out different E-mail addresses for different purposes and leave all messages in the same ‘pool’ (mail forwarding can be used to centralise all messages as well). If one account gets abused, it can be separated out by instantiation of its address (or by breakage of some forwarders).

Separating boxes is the key

Bill Gates arrested in his younger days (photo in public domain)

Slashdot (News for Nerds; Stuff that matters) have shown some rare figures of the way employees in the IT industry use the World Wide Web:

…Microsoft employees use Google for their searches 66% of the time, but MSN Search only 20% of the time, and Firefox is their second most popular browser behind Internet Explorer 6′s whopping 98.76% share. Google employees use Google as their search engine 100% of the time and 21% use a Mozilla or Firefox browser. Apple employees like Google best and 68% use Safari…

From my previous item, it is implied that I live at night. Very few people wake up shortly past midnight, but let me explain why this induces a huge gain. Here are my top 3 motivations:

• Network load is sometimes only 10% of that at daytime. I can download a full backup of my ¼ gig Web space in under a minute.
• Traffic and pollution of daytime are avoided.
• Psychlogical uplift from work completed before the day began.

On the downside, a person’s nightlife (in the conventional sense) is shattered.

Dvorak uncensored is a well-known Web log run by the famous John C. Dvorak. Judging by the times of his posts, he goes to bed after 1AM and wakes up before 5AM (although timestamps can be altered in WordPress). I personally sleep from 7PM to 1AM, but this still gives me more than Dvorak’s 4-minus-hour sleep. Another such ‘super-human’ is my Ph.D. supervisor, Prof. Chris Taylor OBE; I suspect he gets no more sleep than Dvorak. More people to list: Winston Churchill with about 3 hours a night and Margaret Thatcher with 4. (so I’ve heard)