Paolo Donadeo — LifeLOG
A blog about my life, job and thoughts

Following this article of Lifehacker I decided to give a try to Crashplan, an online "cloud" backup service that seemed very promising to me because it supports many platforms (Linux and Android included) and offers an unlimited space plan for one computer for only $36 a year.

Installing the client for Linux is very easy, and presents all the typical backup options (timing, include/exclude paths, and so on).

I decided to include all the directory I already backup with a script of mine on a USB external hard drive.

The problem here is visible in the screenshot I saved: the estimated time for completing the first backup was 52 days!

It's not Crashplan fault, of course, but the fact is that here in Italy we are still very far from using a remote service like that.

Maybe I'll retry again in a a few… years.

Today Unix, or some other operating system deeply inspired by Unix, is pervasive: servers, embedded devices (notably Android, but it's only one) and the “revolutionary” Mac OSX is itself an incarnation of the ideas and works of Dennis Ritchie.

Dennis Ritchie worked on Unix more than 40 years ago, and my questions is: what will we use in forty years? Probably something Dennis Ritchie was working some months ago.

Thanks Mr. Ritchie.

Yesterday I was impressed by a privacy warning of Google+. While I was resharing a friend's post, Google+ remembered me that the original post had a limited visibility, and to take account of this fact. Click the image on the left to read the original message.

So Google+ starts it's journey with a strong accent to your privacy concern: you are invited not to tell everyone your business, because it's a valuable information, only Google wants to know... ;-)

Oggi è il mio compleanno, e questa non è più una novità da molti anni ormai. La prima persona che oggi mi ha fatto gli auguri di buon compleanno è stata la mia amica Valeria, a mezzanotte e cinque.

La seconda “entità” a farmeli è stato… Google! La prima ricerca che ho fatto, questa mattina, mostrava un logo di Google con un pacco regalo ed una torta. Come al solito, quando appare un logo custom, vado col mouse sul logo per scoprire di cosa si tratta.

Sotto il cursore è apparsa la scritta “Happy Birthday Paolo!”. Non ci potevo credere e, per chi in effetti non ci credesse, invito a cliccare sull'immagine in alto.

La prima considerazione è stata: ma che simpatici! La seconda non è stata una considerazione, ma una sensazione : un brivido lungo la schiena. Certo è tutto ovvio, non ci vuole chissà quale analisi o data mining per scoprire qual è la data del mio compleanno, visto che nel mio profilo di Google ce l'ho messa, anche se privata, nel senso che non ne ho autorizzato la pubblicazione.

Il problema qui non è infatti se altri possano scoprire informazioni personali, ma di quante informazioni aggregate disponga un'unica azienda. Cosa deve accadere perché iniziamo a preoccuparci?

In my previous post I expressed a strong opinion about Unity, the new graphic shell included in the latest release of Ubuntu, branding it as unusable.

Actually, I was wrong. My bad feeling was due to the novelty of ideas developed in Unity, and my the superficiality in testing it.

I don't know how Gnome Shell 3 compares with Unity, simply because I didn't tested the new Gnome Shell yet, but for sure Unity is a good project and represents a very interesting approach.

My checklist for today:

1. try the new Ubuntu shell, Unity: done. Verdict: unusable.
2. try Gnome Shell 3: done. Verdict: unstable.

This time I pass, let's see the next Ubuntu release if it will be more stable and usable.

I just learned that, if your DVD burner or the medium you just inserted into it cannot run at 16x speed, it's safe to burn at 17x.

You never stop learning!