11–20 of 93 posts
Time for backupify.com?
i've seen some flickr-specific backup scripts that just dump all of the images to a directory, but they don't preserve titles, dates, sets, collections, tags, etc.
Doing a quick google search turns up this gem:
Staff - heather says: "When an account is deleted, photos and any metadata associated with account is queued and deleted. If not instantaneous, it's removed within minutes."
That's the biggest point I took from this. Removing the wrong account can always happen, but actually wiping data instantly without an invisible "grace period", or retrieval from backup, or anything else to get it back, that's just poor. Especially if it's a pro account.
It sounds to me like they didn't invest much time in the internal admin section. They probably delete a lot of accounts every day, and they've never had an issue with the wrong account being deleted? Or an after-the-fact clearing up of a misunderstanding? They don't start a dialog, at the very least only with pro-users, to get the other side of the story?
I hope something else went wrong here as well, and it's not the way they work normally.
I think this is a huge problem with all cloud services. As we start to rely on cloud providers to look after our data, we need to either become more educated (and proficient) by creating regular backups ourselves (which kind of makes the idea of managed cloud services defunct imo), or be in a position where we can individually sue for damages incurred by negligence on the part of the service company in question. So m…
Would someone really trust Yahoo/Flickr to all their images and not have backups? Hopefully they didn't really care much about the images, else they should have copies elsewhere.
1. people who've been in the situation of lost data when somebody else responsible for its backup hadn't backed the data up.
2. people who don't belong to the first group.
After graduating from the second group into the first, i've always been classifying my data as either "can loose, fnack it" or "i'm backing it up myself, right now"
Would someone really trust Yahoo/Flickr to all their images and not have backups? Hopefully they didn't really care much about the images, else they should have copies elsewhere.
"Someone" would, yes - we're not all as smart and paranoid as you. Anyway, the artist has originals backed up, but the article points out that all of the links to those images, and embeds, are now broken.
If URL is constructed from the data somehow (auto-slug from the title, hash or something), such restoration becomes way simpler
I think this is a huge problem with all cloud services. As we start to rely on cloud providers to look after our data, we need to either become more educated (and proficient) by creating regular backups ourselves (which kind of makes the idea of managed cloud services defunct imo), or be in a position where we can individually sue for damages incurred by negligence on the part of the service company in question. So m…
Indemnification is likely going to push prices up further, making cloud non-competitive compared to traditional storage.
Still, I feel a lot of old technology is merely being relabeled. Today everything that stores data remotely is called a 'cloud'. We may yet see small NAS units relabeled as 'private micro-clouds".
I think this is a huge problem with all cloud services. As we start to rely on cloud providers to look after our data, we need to either become more educated (and proficient) by creating regular backups ourselves (which kind of makes the idea of managed cloud services defunct imo), or be in a position where we can individually sue for damages incurred by negligence on the part of the service company in question. So m…
A single service, even a cloud, is still a single point of failure. Diversify your backup strategies. Indemnification is likely going to push prices up further, making cloud non-competitive compared to traditional storage. Still, I feel a lot of old technology is merely being relabeled. Today everything that stores data remotely is called a 'cloud'. We may yet see small NAS units relabeled as 'private micro-clouds".
However, I'd argue the ability to take legal action, would actually encourage service providers to diversify their own backup strategies and procedures. If a mistake becomes too costly to consider - I think less mistakes would be likely to occur.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A single service, even a cloud, is still a single point of failure. Diversify your backup strategies. Indemnification is likely going to push prices up further, making cloud non-competitive compared to traditional storage. Still, I feel a lot of old technology is merely being relabeled. Today everything that stores data remotely is called a 'cloud'. We may yet see small NAS units relabeled as 'private micro-clouds".
I agree - I've recently learned of the importance of diversification first hand. However, I'd argue the ability to take legal action, would actually encourage service providers to diversify their own backup strategies and procedures. If a mistake becomes too costly to consider - I think less mistakes would be likely to occur.
This conclusion assumes that the people running the business are capable of resolving such issues. If they are not, then all it does is put people out of business. Not everyone grows and adapts when faced with such pressures. Some of them just go extinct.
"This wasn't much compensation considering Flickr Pro costs $24.95 per year, and Mr. Wilhelm has already received a year's worth of Pro through his participation in some events and competitions.*" what else could flickr have offered to compensate?
It's obviously expensive for Flickr to offer something like this but I mean they accidentally deleted 5 years of a paying customers work. I think a refund is the bare minimum.