What is the Best Backup for Windows in a Small Home or Office? (SOHO)
This is the question I asked myself over two years ago. At the time I recommended the SynologyDS210j and I still would if they made it!
It’s now been replaced by the DS212j, that’s it on the left.
This though, is essentially the same as my old one and in fact, in appearance it’s the same. My DS210j has functioned perfectly for well over two years. It just sits there, quietly doing its own thing and has never let me down.
My friend has just bought a D-Link ShareCenter 2 Bay Cloud Network Storage Enclosure since they didn’t want to spend so much…
It’s less than half the price of the Synology and tomorrow evening, I get to set it up!
The specifications, included software, and operating system functionality are almost identical to my Synology. You know, stuff like media server, web server, iTunes server, backup drive, security camera monitoring, the list goes on..!
The reviews, however, say that it is noisy, though my friend says this isn’t an issue since it’s going in a cupboard with the router and internet gateway. It does seem to have a smaller fan than my little white cutie, so that could be it.
Some reviewers had difficulty setting it or its software up. Well actually, I’ve had a few difficulties myself with the DSM software from Synology – if you’ve not done things like this before, it can be difficult and confusing. It’s not Windows after all!
So, watch this space. I’ll get back later when it’s all done.
What is the Best Backup for Windows in a Small Home or Office? Which Windows Backup? A History. Over the years I’ve tried many systems for backing up crucial Windows data. Currently for small-scale backups I use the ubiquitous and almost bullet-proof flash drives, my current one tipping the scales at 8Gb. But for major...
Another day, another Microsoft security alert.. This morning, another raft of advisories arrived in my mail from Secunia, this is one; Internet Explorer Data Binding Memory Corruption Vulnerability This rivetting title is like deja-vu. Time and again we’ve seen this. This is the fault of a company, Microsoft, that puts form before function, functionality before...
In essence, to comply, I’m maintaining everyone’s freedom to act including my own. Cookies (the text files dumped in your computer by your browser) are used to store,,,, well, anything, actually! I could use them to keep my shopping list….
They’re used by Google and other advertisers for advert tracking and by my sites for registration and commenting. I could block registering and commenting, but then, it wouldn’t be very interactive, would it? I note that the Information Commissioners Office (ICO) website has a crap implementation of the directive, in that its cookie message cannot be removed unless you accept cookie use! It takes up nearly a quarter of the screen!
So that’s all I’m saying.
You pays your money (in this case, nothing) and takes your choice. You are implying your consent for cookie use by using my websites.
LSO Super Cookies? Well It was News to Me! I this article in “Windows Secrets” by Woody Leonhard, Eliminate Flash-spawned ‘zombie’ cookies, he describes how they are generated as un-deletable cookies by Flash applications, which compromises user privacy, in the sense that they do stuff to your hard disc and network without your permission! So...
There’s now an official UK Pirate Party. It’s founded on the guiding principles that all art & creativity should be free for people sat in their bedrooms and that those people in the bedrooms should have absolute privacy! True. They want the Swedish model of the convicted file-sharers in the UK. Also, they want Google...
Orwell must be turning in his grave in despair that what he predicted as a warning about what not to do, now looks like coming to fruition.
Remarkably, since wangling themselves into government, the conservative-libdem coalition government is now actually dropping a key part of their manifesto which they laboriously agreed two years ago. This can still be found on the government website, page 11 to be exact (pdf) . Here’s what they said:
The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian…. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power – FAIL
…reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties and roll back state intrusion – FAIL
… introduce safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation – FAIL
…end the storage of internet and email records without good reason – FAIL
…a British Bill of Rights that … protects and extends British liberties – FAIL
(Actually, the whole Con-Dem pledge list makes good reading to see just how far removed from it our evil diktat of quangos has become.)
Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Photo credit: andreasmarx)
Not so long ago I was haranguing the former Labour government about their plans for ID Cards, their laws over CCTV and photographing in public places, the reduction in privacy for individuals and the removal of our civil rights over detention without trial, due cause and 3rd party notification for first 90 days and them 42 days.
I left the Labour Party because of it and have not rejoined.
Huge Vocal Resentment Against UK Government Secret Citizen Monitoring Plans.
Now, the tories and their liberal stooges have been shown to be both serially evil in their pronouncements and plans, and also serially incompetent of managing almost anything.
Their pathetic management of a minor industrial dispute (the fuel shortage) which did nothing except invoke almost universal resentment of the coalition and reawaken a general awareness of their ineffectiveness comes on top of stripping the very foundations away from one of UK society’s greatest inventions of the Industrial Age, our National Health Service (NHS).
Top this behavioural abomination with that of the revolving door policy between banking and politics which they continue to promote with zero penalties for failure while the population-at-large have to prop up the whole system with their taxes means only two things to me.
The government must do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
They will do something desperate to have any hope of re-election in 3 years – this means either war (patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel) or economic boom-and-bust gambling.
Astute folk will see this as my prediction for government actions over the next 3 years.
Tories: Keep Friends Happy
Meanwhile, hundreds of extra Tory donors will soon be available to bankroll the “all is good” story. They will arrive as beneficiaries of the windfall provided as the “former NHS” contracts are handed out to friends, much like Michael Ashcroft benefited from the first round of NHS privatisation during the Thatcher era. This article on Powerbase and this one (sourced from a now defunct article in The Scotsman) show quite clearly that 1/3 of cleaning contracts went to Ashcroft’s businesses during this time, saying;
MICHAEL Ashcroft, (…) bankrolled an “independent” publicity campaign that allowed his multi-million-pound contract cleaning empire to prosper and led to a change in the law. The campaign was run from the London office of the former Conservative Scottish secretary, Michael Forsyth. A spokesman for Mr Ashcroft confirmed last night that he had contributed to the Public and Local Service Efficiency Campaign (PULSE), which was set up in 1985 to persuade the public sector to contract out services such as cleaning and catering. The campaign had been disbanded by the end of the 1980s after the Conservative government passed the 1988 Local Government Act . Mr Ashcroft’s Hawley Services Group, a contract cleaning firm later known as ADT, flourished under the new regime, with ADT, winning a third of NHS contracts between 1983 and 1988.
For further information into the depths that the Tories will go to enable all public money to be fed straight to their business friends, see this article which pulls apart the dealings of Ashcroft, discredited Dame Shirley Porter, NIMBY Nicholas Ridley, Chris Chope (the dog turd of Christchurch) and current (dodgy expenses, remember) minister Eric Pickles.
How Bad was Thatcher’s Recession compared to the Current Economic Slump? Q. Well, how would you find out, exactly? A. Surprisingly easily. This graph here compares historical economic slumps with the current one, on a month by month basis. It’s taken from the “National Institute of Economic and Social Research” (NIESR) website here. Notionally, it’s...
Too Little, Too Late, Gordon Brown This morning, PM Gordon Brown told Andrew Marr that he wants to ‘clean up’ parliament. He wants a ‘code of conduct’ for MPs to follow. The thing is, there’s already a code of conduct – it’s called the law! All we, ‘the people’ want, is to have reasonable laws...
85% reduction in queen (and thus new hive) production
10% smaller hives
Disorientated bees – the bees can’t find their hive and die…
US migratory beekeepers loading tractor-trailer load of bees for transport from South Carolina to Maine to pollinate blueberries. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reasons, Nazis and Jews – What are Neonicotinoid Pesticides?
IG Farben (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are many candidates for CCD and pesticides are just one possible or contributory factor. Things like bee predators, mites, electromagnetic radiation, loss of habitat…. it’s quite a long list.
However, the two studies above seem to be pretty secure controlled studies that looked at one factor (the neonicotinoid pesticides), examining the bees in isolation both with and without the expected non-lethal local dosage of the chemicals so as to eliminate the other possible causes.
Acetamiprid – Aventis (French conglomerate inc. Rhône-Poulenc, Hoechst and others)
Clothianidin – Bayer, Takeda
Dinotefuran – Mitsui
Imidacloprid (the most widely used insecticide in the world) – Bayer
Nitenpyram – Novartis (formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)
Thiacloprid – Bayer
Thiamethoxam- Bayer, Syngenta (another entity formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)
Fritz ter Meer (1884-1967) at the Nuremberg Trials. Ter Meer was I.G. Farben official, member of NSDAP. This photograph of ter Meer (probably as a defendant) was taken by US Army photographers on behalf of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (OUSCCPAC, May 1945 - Oct. 1946) or its successor organization, the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC, Oct. 1946 - June 1949). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Bayer
What’s interesting from this list is how often Bayer pops up in the neonicotinoid (a neuro-toxin) story.
It famously made Zyklon B, which made a poison gas and was one of the main methods of murdering Jews and others by the Nazis during WW2. It did this under the conglomerate business name of IG Farben which was broken up post war by the allies into the original business entities, Bayer being one, and it’s still around now!
A Bayer (IG Farben) boss, Fritz ter Meer, served 7 years post WW2 for his crimes and then was immediately made supervisory board chairman of Bayer. His crimes included designing a satellite concentration camp to Auschwitz. Some Nazi industrialists & businessmen were executed, like Bruno Tesch. Several other convicted Nazi War Criminals got high-powered jobs following their release, just like ter Meer.
Karmic Retribution
What I see as a reason for the bee decline ultimately relates to our overall karma.
It is not retribution against individuals directly. The bad karma affects us all, now, because we have continued to allow processes to continue which harm ourselves and our environment. The disappearing bees are just one manifestation of this.
Ter Meer got his nice job back at Bayer, probably because he was the best person to do it, especially at this critical period of rebuilding Germany. We could say that he continued his life’s work of creating death by chemicals (which I’ve cunningly yet disingenuously alluded to in order to attract your attention!), but it must be remembered that alongside Zyklon B, the same businesses created many products which are essential to our productive farms and lifestyles. Aspirin, for instance. Fertilisers as another.
In fact, Fritz Haber, whose academic work was enthusiastically taken up at IG Farben and others, demonstrates the dichotomy of human nature by inventing chemical warfare while simultaneously inventing a process to fix nitrogen from the air to make fertiliser (or explosive, since it’s the same thing). One gives life benefit, one removes it completely. As it says on Wikipedia,
“The food base of half of the current world population is based on the Haber-Bosch process”
Haber’s karmic retribution was swift and fast. Whether he knew or felt it is beside the point. It happened.
His wife shot herself because of her guilt over his personal supervision at the 1st gas release on the Western Front.
Their son who found her, was so appalled by this and his father’s actions, that he committed suicide in 1946 (like survivor guilt, I suppose.).
Haber was Jewish, rewarded by the Nazis who used his gas Zyklon A, developed into Zyklon B to murder Jews and others during the holocaust.
Many members of Haber’s extended family were killed in the Holocaust.
Direct Karmic Attention
A honeybee on an apiary, spreading feromones to 'call back' her collegues, showing her nassanoff-gland. Location: Tübingen-Hagelloch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But now we can easily see, that by continuing the bad processes, by continuing the bad ideas, by continuing the bad attitudes of the past, the actions of the past have started to hit us all full in the face.
Bees are just part of it.
Our disjointed energy & food policies of “live today, pay tomorrow” are just larger examples of the wider issue.
To fully understand how we should proceed in our lives and how we interact with others and our environment, we need look no further than some key Buddhist principles, laid out before us a very long time ago by Siddhārtha Gautama. He said:
right view,
right intention,
right speech,
right action,
right livelihood,
right effort,
right mindfulness,
right concentration.
This is called The Noble Eightfold Path, and if we all paid attention to it and acted sincerely with it, then we’d all be a lot better off.
Coroner and Law I’m often struck when reading the papers or news, to see the coroner’s verdict on someone’s death as: Ending his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed Well they have to say something, it’s their job, but the phrase is very peculiar. Take this couple, the Milners, who were...
In a weird co-incidence that I missed at the time, I’ve just found that the plans for the Auschwitz death camp were put on display during my Austrian visit earlier this year. This visit very soon prompted my outburst on the pontificating nutty bishop, Richard Williamson (see The Face of Evil from 20 Feb...
Decent people everywhere will be appalled to learn that the charity Mencap recently sponsored an award at the first ever ERSA Employability Awards. ERSA are the trade body who were formed in 2005 to lie on behalf of the money … Continue reading → […]
The Civil Service Rank and File Network have called a rally outside the PCS conference this week to demand action from the union on the vicious benefit sanctioning regime. Benefit sanctions are set to become a huge issue for public … Continue reading → […]
