New Woody Herman Mosaic

[Kevin Bresnahan]

12 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Redundant backups are all that is necessary, Kevin. My external hard-drive backs up my entire computer about every 12 minutes. 

Not to mention all my downloads from iTunes are stored in the cloud automatically. 

Anyone that loses their entire library due to a hard-drive crash these days is simply not doing it right. 

You are right when you say that they are not doing it right. Most pf them don't know right from wrong on their PC. I think that you are making an incorrect assumption that many (most?) people are as computer savvy as those of us here on organissimo. I am often called upon to help friends with computer problems and when I bring up their lack of backup, I almost always get a blank stare. And when I start pricing out some external backup options, their answer is usually, "No, I'm OK for now".

Lately, I've started buying inexpensive USB drives at BJ's for when I go out on one of these PC repair road trips. I usually back up their pictures and important documents and leave it behind in a desk drawer. Even though these drives are not supposed to be used for "permanent" storage, I figure it's better than nothing.

[Scott Dolan]

27 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

You are right when you say that they are not doing it right. Most pf them don't know right from wrong on their PC. I think that you are making an incorrect assumption that many (most?) people are as computer savvy as those of us here on organissimo. I am often called upon to help friends with computer problems and when I bring up their lack of backup, I almost always get a blank stare. And when I start pricing out some external backup options, their answer is usually, "No, I'm OK for now".

Lately, I've started buying inexpensive USB drives at BJ's for when I go out on one of these PC repair road trips. I usually back up their pictures and important documents and leave it behind in a desk drawer. Even though these drives are not supposed to be used for "permanent" storage, I figure it's better than nothing.

No, no. Don’t get me wrong, I’m making no assumptions at all. 

I was just addressing the long-term viability question that Rooster brought up concerning digital files vs CD/LP. 

Also, take a look at your example of a fire or some “act of god” destroying your home. Unless you have backup CDRs of your entire collection stored off site, the viability showdown between downloads stored in the cloud vs physical media just became a rout. 

[psu_13]

I've lost much more music because I lost the physical media than I have ever lost music on my various hard drives. I've also had a few CDs (including irreplaceable things, like Mosaic sets) just rot while they sat in a box and become unreadable.

Yes you have to have a fairly disciplined scheme for backups and making new copies. But you had to do that anyway if you use computers regularly for anything important.

Cloud backup services like Backblaze are also handy.

I would advise not thinking of your iTunes cloud catalog as a "backup". Those files only exist as long as Apple has the right licenses, and can disappear unexpectedly if things get pulled.

 

[Scott Dolan]

Not with purchased copies. Those are permanent. 

If they lose rights, they simply cannot sell more copies. 

[Rooster_Ties]

I've never trusted iTunes a whole lot, but I have used it to port things to my iPhone (and previously to an iPod mini).  But the only way I could find to manage having different music for my phone, vs. my wife's phone -- was to have two different instances of iTunes running under our separate accounts/logins (meaning within windows).  But then it became a pain when we were both working on things, because half the documents would be saved under her login, and half under mine.  My phone (and old iPhone 5) would only hold about 20-30 albums at most, so I finally got tired of having to delete things out of iTunes, in order to upload new albums.  I'm sure there was some better way to do it, but iTunes would only synch everything between it and my phone, so I kept having to delete things.

We don't have a ton of stuff on our shared laptop, so we normally just back things up on a couple different thumb drives now and then.  Not a very good system, I'll admit, but I do try and make two copies, in case one goes belly up.

We don't have pictures, or tons of documents, nothing more than maybe 20-30 documents that really matter all that much on our laptop.  And anything that's really important, we make sure we print hardcopies for our files.

Something like iTunes might be well and good, but a couple times I upgraded, it didn't go well, and I had to reinstall it from scratch.  But it wasn't a big deal, since I was deleting and uploading CD's to it anyway.

It finally got to be too much of a hassle, and my iPhone has nearly run out of memory anyway (really needing to upgrade), so I really haven't used iTunes in about 2 years.

Edited August 16, 2018 by Rooster_Ties

[Scott Dolan]

You can choose what to load on each phone. My wife and I have varying tastes. I load what she wants on her phone, and load what I want on mine. All from the same library. 

All from the same iTunes program, account/login, and iMac. 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Scott Dolan

[ghost of miles]

This is an older story (from April of this year), but the organizers of JazzWeek Summit confirmed it at the conference in San Jose last week:

Apple eliminating iTunes music downloads in 2019

From the article:

Additionally, the sources stressed that music downloads will always work on all Apple devices and the iTunes platform, across all versions.  That includes music purchased on iTunes, or uploaded from any other source.  So you’ll always be able to play MP3s, iTunes-purchased AACs, and even older, DRM-protected iTunes songs (many years ago, song downloads were ‘DRM protected,’ creating limitations on file-sharing and other uses).

Other variations, including ‘iTunes Plus’ downloads and video downloads, will always be playable.  You’ll also be able to manage your music download collection on iTunes without issue.  Apple will only be ending its paid download offering.

[JSngry]

Why can't my record player make phone calls? You'd think they'd have fixed that by now.

[ghost of miles]

2 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Why can't my record player make phone calls? You'd think they'd have fixed that by now.

You gotta get the new Alexa brain-chip, man!  Everything you'd ever want at your command, streamed directly into your noggin... just tell Alexa to cue it up and pay your bills while you're at it.  Of course your mental autonomy will be placed directly at risk, but that's oh-so-20th-century, what they might call a "legacy" concern.  

[JSngry]

Brain chips? Are they as high in fiber as the name implies?

[ghost of miles]

4 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Brain chips? Are they as high in fiber as the name implies?

Jim, they eliminate the need to even give a s*%^.

[JSngry]

Elimination through elimination. Win-win!

[gmonahan]

6 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Elimination through elimination. Win-win!

You guys laugh, but Elon Musk is actually working on a way to put a chip into the brain to access the Cloud, and I recently read an article about people who have chips inserted into their hands so they can enter their apartments without keys.

Me, I'll stick with keys, thanks very much. And cds.

 

 

gregmo

[JSngry]

I think Elon Musk might be playing with smoke and mirrors as far as financing goes, which is not to say that he's not pursuing these things, just that I take everything he says with a grain of salt as far as how sustained he's going to be.

[Scott Dolan]

Space X and Tesla Motors seems to be doing well enough. He does tend to be a bit pie in the sky at times. But hey, so was Steve Jobs. That seemed to work out well enough. 

 

[JSngry]

The key phrase there is "seems to be"...the whole recent thing about taking it private and then he's working with these people and then, no, not them, THEM, it's just...I don't know...and then production quotas are being adjusted on the fly...he might actually be coping, but he might just be dancing. Time will tell.

[JSngry]

More on Musk: https://www.axios.com/elon-musk-tesla-tweet-sec-stock-market-bbe9a170-14ad-4a8f-bfb2-8e33f44d1fed.html

I don't know, I really don't. Just sayin'...

[Brad]

The problem is that he released info via Twitter instead of via through an 8-K (SEC form fo reporting significant or material information).  The directors have hired outside counsel.  It’s not the first time he’s run afoul of regulators.  In addition, during an earnings call a month or two he was flip to banks, not the kind of people you want to annoy if you’re trying to raise funds for expansion or to take the company private. 

[Jay]

12 hours ago, psu_13 said:

I've also had a few CDs (including irreplaceable things, like Mosaic sets) just rot while they sat in a box and become unreadable.

 

Would you please provide more information about this?  I've been collecting CDs since the mid 80s and I've never had a failure.  I read about some European CDs were affected by rot but certainly not Mosaics.

[ghost of miles]

14 hours ago, JSngry said:

More on Musk: https://www.axios.com/elon-musk-tesla-tweet-sec-stock-market-bbe9a170-14ad-4a8f-bfb2-8e33f44d1fed.html

I don't know, I really don't. Just sayin'...

New NY Times interview with Musk.

[JSngry]

Yeah, I still don't know. What was that guy who made the car they made the movie about, Forrest Tucker? Musk has obviously gained a lot more traction that that guy, but still...we'll see how all this plays out. I hope it goes well, at least the car part. The rocket part, eh...don't get me started on that.

[gmonahan]

I believe that's Preston Tucker, Jim. Forrest Tucker was the actor on F-Troop!

 

 

gregmo

[Scott Dolan]

Forrest Whitaker played Bird, though. So there’s that. 

[JSngry]

Can't see the birds for the Forrest.

[psu_13]

14 hours ago, Jay said:

Would you please provide more information about this?  I've been collecting CDs since the mid 80s and I've never had a failure.  I read about some European CDs were affected by rot but certainly not Mosaics.

The one I remember best is the Mosaic Art Blakey set. This set had some production issues, I gather, that made one or two of the CDs in the set go bad. I have seen multiple copies of this set where disk 1 or 2 is just not readable, including the one I bought back in the day. Luckily I already had a lossless copy of this when I discovered that the disks had gone bad.

I've had some other CDs look like the have delaminated or at least changed color on the data side. But they were still readable so I made rips of them that appear to be OK.

In general my assumption is that retail CDs will not be that permanent, and having rips and multiple copies of the data is probably a  good idea. CD-R is even less so, since it depends on dyes that will certainly fade over time.

FWIW there does exist software that attempts to make a "bit perfect" copy of the CD and estimates how well it does using checksums collected on the Internet from other users who ripped copies of the same recordings. You can use this to figure out if old disks that you suspect may have gone bad actually have gone bad. 😃