I’ve been spoiled by circumstance: by being broke for so long, I haven’t bought any computer components of any kind in well over a year. So I was happily rolling along when I needed to replace my DSL modem.

No problem, I got that and a new hard drive. Six hours later, neither of them work. I’m online (to look up support docs) on the old, erratically-working setup while the gleaming new D-Link modem sits and looks annoyed… and I’ve rebooted I don’t even know how many times trying to get the hard drive recognized… it may be DOA, but it shows up as a new device…. sometimes. And then not in Disk Management which — joy of joys — is really difficult to use… Reboot, BIOS, reboot, windows, repeat.

I’ve been writing a lot about this in the book I’m working on — looking back at the sci-fi visions of how computers worked, one of the things that always annoys me is that they’re all slick and perfectly integrated. Re-reading Neuromancer, I wanted to cheer when Case has to find an adapter for his deck’s cable. Not that it’s particularly realistic. But that’s one of the things I love about cyberpunk: the starship Enterprise doesn’t ever have an untraceable bug that may or may not cause the control consoles to lock up when under severe display loads… but they should. Because it’s a good 15 years (!) since I first plugged an ethernet cable into something, and over twenty (!) since I first got my hands on a hard drive, but you still can’t plug and play them consistently.

What reason is there to believe that in 2030 we’re all going to be using seemlessly integrated, bugless portable devices that connect to an entirely orderly world data sharing network?

Today, driving on some remarkably ice-slick roads to work, I was on a three-lane arterial, minding my own business when – despite there being a ton of space behind me – someone in the right lane sped up next to me, cut me off, and braked. I went full antilock and everything for a second, no harm done except the month it probably took off my life, and kept on. After not a quarter of a mile, they went back into their lane and took a freeway onramp.

Here’s the thing: I could take a survey of people and I’d bet at least two-thirds could guess what kind of car they were driving, and they’d be right.

Isn’t that weird? I wonder if at some point each of these asshat driver thought “hey, that moron drives like me and I too have $65,000 to drop on a car — to the dealership!” and a demographic was born.

White House spokesman, asked about the 80 bajillion missing emails:

MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this…I think to the best of what all the analysis we’ve been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing…we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing.

Q So where are they?

MR. FRATTO: Where are what?

The biggest story right now is that the Bush White House deliberately took apart a system the Clinton administration put into place for the archiving of emails to comply with the law, and then deleted the backup tapes, destroying 1.2 million – 1.5 million emails. Government emails covering the outing of a CIA agent working against nuclear weapons proliferation to damage her husband politically, the run up to the Iraq war, the firing of US Attorneys… all of it, gone. It is, and I say this without reservation, the largest incident of its kind in American history. It’s the famous gap in the Nixon tapes times a hundred thousand.

Working out this morning, the fitness center had the TV turned to CNN. I learned:
– Winning American Idol is not a guarantee of musical success
– Zach Ephron had a medical issue. He was in some movie
– Rosie O’Donnell wrote a blog post about how Britney’s going to die like Princess Diana

This last story went on forever, and included a heated debate that included a woman identified as an “investigative journalist”.

Really. She was arguing about Britney and Rosie.

I could not believe this. I thought that at any moment they would swap back to real news (Republican Congressman raised money for Al-Queda!) and it never happened. I watched that thing for 20m.

Crazy. Just crazy.

I went out to go replace my car’s stereo this morning, and the place I went was out of the particular harness or whatever to fit my car, so they gave me two options:
– wait for them to go get it
– go pick the part up myself from the other store and bring it back for $10 off my tab

I almost had to bust out laughing, and not for the obvious reason. I realized immediately that there were actually three options:

– wait for them to get it
– go to this other branch, pick up the harness, drive it back for them to get a $10 reward, have them install it, go home
– go this other branch and buy the whole thing from them, have them install it, go home

Option 1 is a little annoying, but not a huge deal.
Option 2 is frankly ludicrous. It’s barely worth the gas, much less my time, to do this.
Assuming I’ve got a little time on my hands and don’t mind driving, I’d go for Option 3.

At which point, the original store (and the sales guy who made me the offer) is out the commission on the whole job. That’s a fair chunk of money.

And then I started asking some other questions:
Why would you even make me that offer?
Would the other branch be honorable enough to not mention that as long as I was up there… ?
Does anyone ever take them up on an offer like that?

Really, if you’ve gone into a place in order to get your replacement deck installed by someone qualified rather than order it off the Internet and do it yourself or go to some cut-rate place and trust your car to some random guy with a power drill, you’re obviously willing to pay some premium for convenience and assurance.

I’m surprised they’d even let me know that another specific location had all the parts, allowing me to figure out that the option existed.

Here’s the EULA for SyncBackSE, one of the candidates for “program I’d be using to back up remotely”. For ease of reading, I’ll bold the particularly horrible section:

SOFTWARE is provided as is without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, 2BrightSparks Pte Ltd its suppliers, its distributors, and its affiliates, or others who may offer SOFTWARE, will not be liable for any damages whatsoever, whether direct or indirect, special, incidental, consequential, or punitive of any kind (including but not limited to damages for: loss of profits, loss of confidential or other information, business interruption, personal injury, loss of privacy, failure to meet any duty – including of good faith or of reasonable care – negligence, and any other pecuniary or other loss whatsoever) arising out of, or in any way related to the use of, or inability to use our SOFTWARE or support services, or the provision of or failure to provide support services, or otherwise under, or in connection with SOFTWARE documentation, or any provision of these terms and conditions, even if 2BrightSparks Pte Ltd or any supplier, distributor, or its affiliates has been advised of the possibility of such damages.

Really? I don’t even get good faith? If someone files a bug and says “on alternate Tuesdays when I run SyncBackSE it deletes my files and then overwrites them with 0s and 7s repeatedly to eliminate any chance I might recover them” and they don’t fix it, ever, I can’t do anything?

Oh, and it gets better:

2BrightSparks Pte Ltd furthermore disclaims all warranties, including without limitation any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and on infringement.

Even if you pierce all of that, you get your money back, and that’s it:
Any liability of the seller will be limited exclusively to product replacement or refund of purchase price.

Data destroyed because we totally sent all your backup files to a data haven in the Dutch Antilles? How about a copy of the next incremental version, in which we may or may not have fixed that bug. After all, it’s not as if we’re bound by even a requirement to make a good faith effort to solve it. Or, specifically:

2BrightSparks Pte Ltd is not obligated to provide support, maintenance, or updates for the SOFTWARE (either by email, phone, or otherwise).

WOW.

And yet on their product page:

SyncBackSE ensures your most valuable asset, data, remains protected

No it doesn’t. It fucking well does not. SyncBackSE explicitly does not ensure your most valuable asset, data, remains protected.

I looked it up ensure on M-W:

ensure
: to make sure, certain, or safe : guarantee

Argh. This stuff drives me nuts.

I started messing around with backup implementations today. Now, the obvious question is: why not just get a service from Mozy or whoever? Isn’t that slightly more expensive but have the advantage of being entirely painless? I was going to rant about this, but someone already did it for me: check out this article on backup services disclaiming responsibility for being backup services.

As a long time techie, I’m used to having my software explicitly deny responsibility if it decides to burn my house down and raid my bank accounts if I use the help file too often. I mean, you’d think you’d be paying Microsoft for some kind of quality, but if you read those agreements, you’re really no better off than with a free open-source program — anyway, I think the service thing is entirely different:

“Hey, here’s a crescent wrench. I know it could be used for all kinds of things, like a paperweight or improvised blunt weapon, and that’s your business. You could even use it as a wrench. Whatever. Either way, you buy it, you break it, it’s up to you. $2.”

“Here at Bob’s Auto Club, we offer roadside assistance, 24/7/365, we’ll be there for your auto needs no matter where you are or what your problem is. You can rely on us. Except we may not show up, or offer assistance, no matter how close to our offices you are or how great your problem is, and we may even cause those problems, because it’s hilarious. $10/month.”

There’s just no way. It’d be like hiring a paper shredding service that reserved the right to not shred confidential documents, scan them, and sold them to competitors.

Plus, I’m uncomfortable not being able to encrypt myself — having one company control that and the storage itself spooks me. Especially when they’re not willing to say “I promise not to rustle through your stuff.”