When Backups Aren’t Backups But Are Still Useful

 Computing  No Responses »
Apr 232016
 

In the week, I got acquainted with the OSX Time Machine’s “Local Snapshots” which get created when your normal Time Machine volume is not available. When digging around for more information on it, I came across the trainee backup-nazi’s standard line that a backup on the same hard disk as the original data is no backup at all, and is completely useless. Well they were half-right.

To over simplify, backups perform two basic functions – they provide a copy of your data that you can use in the event of a disaster (your laptop gets stolen, your house burns down, etc.), and they allow you to recover from those “Oh! I didn’t mean to delete that file” moments. And the later use case is by far the most common – particularly in an organisation where you can ask someone else to recover a file for you.

But of course local snapshots that get created when the backup media is not available are not true backups. Any disaster that occurs is very unlikely to destroy the original data but leave the local snapshot unharmed; if it does leave it unharmed then fine. But backups are for the worst possible scenario – I did not mention your house burning down by accident.

But local snapshots are useful by themselves; whilst they are certainly not backups, they can be very useful for the most common variety of restoration job. And because they are so available, it is possible to use them for purposes we would not have thought of before.

Such as looking at what that document you are working on looked like yesterday. That paragraph you re-worked; does it really read better today than the original version yesterday? In a more technical sense, I have been using file system snapshots for years – to look back in time.

damascus-unix-prompt

Panama Papers: Where’s The Surprise?

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Apr 112016
 

Let’s be honest – we know that many of the rich were stashing piles of loot into offshore banks before the Panama Papers leaked, and we know that many of the rich are stashing piles of loot into offshore banks after the Panama Papers leaked. So what did we really learn?

Names.

Of course none of those names from the UK are guilty of anything – they all had some “good” reason to have an offshore bank account or company. Varying from needing to get around currency export regulations (that sounds a bit dodgy to me) to buying houses – because of course it is not possible to buy houses in the UK without using an offshore company.

Ninety-five per cent of our work coincidentally consists in selling vehicles to avoid taxes.

Partner of Mossack Fonseca

Hmm … I wonder which statement is more to be trusted – people making public statements that they were not attempting to avoid taxes, or a private statement about their real motives?

There have been suggestions that the ICIJ have been carefully selective about their revelations; specifically to avoid embarrassing “special people”. Well they are right in one sense – the ICIJ is being selective but there is probably no sinister motive involved. They are just digesting 2.6Tbytes of leaked documents which you can be sure takes considerable time to process without undergoing a severe case of digital indigestion.

And of course maximising the impact of the stories to come over possibly months.

As to the source of the data, at this stage it is not clear how the data was leaked. There are several claims :-

  • The company email server was “hacked”. Whilst some of the leaked documents were emails, many were not and whilst some more normal document formats are often found “attached” to emails, database files are very rarely attached to emails. Plus leaking 2.6Tbytes of data from an email server is not entirely stealthy.
  • Various web-based services (WordPress and Drupal have been mentioned) have been claimed to have vulnerabilities which were supposedly used to break in and ex-filtrate the documents. To be honest it seems a bit unlikely that a web-based application would have direct access to all those documents, but perhaps the company didn’t believe in data security (a law firm? with ultra-rich clients including very successful criminals?). Again leaking 2.6Tbytes of data from a web server isn’t exactly the stealthiest of methods.
  • The next method is probably the most boring method. Someone from inside the firm simply drops a backup tape into their jacket on the way out of the building. By far the easiest way of ex-filtrating the data considering the size.

We will probably never know exactly how the data was obtained as the source is doing everything in their power to remain anonymous.

stack-of-coins-p1

The Linguistic Divide: The USA And Britain

 General, Humour  No Responses »
Apr 102016
 

Every so often, my view of youtube shows up videos about Americans visiting the UK, and when I’m really bored I’ll try one out.

There are a number of differences between the USA and Britain, but I’m going to concentrate on the differences in language. Some words have entirely different meanings in the UK. But first, just for your own safety, here are the different words for different parts of the UK :-

Name Description
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland The formal name of the country. Usually shortened to UK or Britain.
Northern Ireland The 6 counties of Ireland that refused to become part of an independent Ireland.
Wales  A country to the west of Britain that was conquered by the English in the mists of time. The Welsh have refused to be called English ever since; don’t start as it won’t make you popular.
Scotland A country to the north of Britain that was conquered by the English in the mists of time. Don’t call them English; they’ll be as Scottish as possible when trying to correct you, and you probably won’t understand them.
England The largest part of Britain. The English are polite but not necessarily nice (you don’t take over the countries of the Welsh and Scottish by being nice).

The key fact to remember from that table above is that England is not Britain as a whole. We might be polite about it, but we won’t forgive you.

Now there’s plenty of spelling differences between what you Americans call English and real English, but I’m going to concentrate on the spoken differences. Just about the only serious point is this: As soon as you start speaking, we know you’re American (or Canadian) so we know you don’t speak English properly (it’s English not American). So when you make the occasional gaff (that’s a mistake BTW), we’re going to know you don’t really mean what you said. We might make fun of you, but usually we’ll be polite about it.

To give an example, way back in the mists of time when the film “Shag” (that word means sex in the UK) was launched in the UK, we may have made a few jokes but we were not expecting to see pornography when we went to see the film.

gas: In the US, you stick gas into your petrol-driven cars; in the UK we put petrol in instead. Gas is of course either what happens when you heat up a liquid so it enters a gaseous state, or what happens when you eat too many beans.

fags and faggots. In the US these two words are derogatory terms for those of a homosexual persuasion. In the UK the first refers to a cigarette, and the second is a meat dish whose sole purpose in life is to appear on menus to horrify American tourists.

pants: In the US this is outer clothing; in the UK they are underwear. Don’t talk about pant stains; there’s just too many opportunities for off-colour jokes.

fall: In the US this is the season between summer and winter. In the UK if someone trips you over, you have a fall; the season is called autumn.

bathroom: In the US this is used for the room that contains a toilet; in the UK we get clean in the bathroom and name the room with the toilet after the porcelain found within it.

sweets and candy: In the US, stuff with lots of sugar is called candy; in the UK they’re called sweets. Although frankly you would have to work quite hard to get confused about this – whether it’s a candy store, or a sweet shop, the contents of the window are self-explanatory.

mailbox: In the US this is where you find the stuff printed on dead trees that people have sent you. In the UK we call this a postbox, or frankly more commonly a letter box. In the UK, we use mailbox to refer to where our electronic mail is kept.

fanny: Refers to a different body part in the UK than in the UK. Without getting too explicit, in the UK a fanny-pack would be a good alternative name for a tampon.  Not a good area to get confused!

There’s a whole lot more, and I’ll add to this list when I feel the urge.

 

asshole-1

Maternity Mortality Rates: USA Loses

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Apr 052016
 

During a recently on-line rant about anti-abortion terrorists, I happened to trip over some statistics on the rate of mortality during childbirth (the “Maternity Mortality Rate”) from the WHO. And being the kind of person that statistics interest, I spent some time looking into them; indeed I got so interested I transcribed some of the raw figures to generate a pretty graph :-

mmr2

This obviously excludes many countries – what we could call the developing countries. The countries included (which you’ll have to peer closely in order to see – sorry about that) are all rich. At least relatively speaking.

Just look at the USA! Down with the also-rans amongst what could be called the relatively dysfunctional countries at the fringes of being considered “developed”. Now you could argue that there is something special about the reason why the USA doesn’t have a single-digit MMR like the overwhelming majority of developed countries. I can think of a few possibilities myself :-

  1. Perhaps the USA is the only country in the world to tell the truth about it’s actual MMR and all the other countries are lying. Perhaps. I am not going to argue there isn’t a bit of shady practices going on with the figures in some cases, but these figures are produced by statisticians and as an overall group statisticians don’t like lying about numbers. Yes there is the old saw about “lies, dammed lies, and statistics”, but the source of that distrust is the twisting that politicians apply to statistics to support their lies.
  2. Perhaps the USA didn’t read the instructions from the WHO properly about what kind of deaths to include in their returns and they’re including deaths that other countries wouldn’t include. But whilst I’ve not read the instructions from the WHO about this, I have read other instructions on statistics and they usually go into excruciating detail about what should and should not be included. It’s possible that the USA handed this little job over to a complete dumb-arse, but it doesn’t seem very likely.
  3. The WHO is anti-American and decided to inflate the figures. This is just laughable – the WHO isn’t going to risk getting called out by doing something so obvious even if it really was anti-American.

Sometimes the most obvious reason is the real reason – and here the most obvious reason is that the US health care system sucks.

There is additional evidence to show that – the WHO figures cover years other that 2013, and the US figures are consistently bad and getting worse.

But how can this be? The USA is one of the wealthiest countries in the world that spends a ridiculous percentage of it’s annual GDP on health care. It also produces many healthcare innovations and undoubtedly has improved maternal care at some point with some new technique. The really rather obvious (although it really needs to be tested) is that healthcare in the USA is divided into three.

There are those who have full insurance, and this group probably gets pretty good healthcare.

There are those who are covered by government schemes and this group probably gets reasonable healthcare.

And there are those who fall between the cracks – they’re not covered for various reasons – and their care is abysmal and probably limited to emergency care only. Which can sometimes be too late.

But when you come down to it, if you are pregnant it may be worth avoiding the USA until you’ve given birth. And if you’re already in the USA, it may be worth thinking about a long break somewhere where they have a healthcare system that doesn’t suck.

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