Just like the Pied Piper

Posted on September 2, 2005 at 7:24 AM in 'Random Crap I Found On The Internet' with tags 'new_orleans, hurricane, binrock, bram_cohen, bittorrent'

This was interesting. As I was catching up on the various blogs that I read, I came across this entry on Bram Cohen's site. Bram is the inventor of the well-known BitTorrent protocol. The entry discusses the pros and cons of living in a valley between two barely contained bodies of water, but what I found amusing was this comment posted by someone whom I apparently know, and who seems to think I was irresponsible in offering my friends free hosting on my server. It's surprising to find yourself discussed on the website of someone notable.

It's also somewhat annoying to have him suggest that I was "encouraging" people to host their irreplaceable data on my server, and never mind those mountains of water just over the horizon. For one thing, pretty much every one of the users on BinRock asked me if they could have space on my server; I didn't go out recruiting or anything. But even if I had, it's not like I was suggesting people come play on this cliffside with me or something. It's server space. Sure, it sucks to lose the files that were on the server, but nobody is going to suffer any material losses because of what happened. It's an inconvenience, and I apologize to everyone that I wasn't able to keep more complete backups, but I think there's much more significant things to worry about in the wake of this hurricane.

| Revision: 1 | (10 comments) | Comments are closed for this entry.

Comments

Posted by henry 2 hours, 34 minutes later

It's pretty cool how Bram open minded-ly shares his opinion with anybody with a mouth. Glad to see binrock back up, even if it's a costly temporary skeleton setup. Oh yeah by the way can you host some pictures for me?

Posted by Jenn 1 week, 1 day later

Haha, you fool! Have you learned nothing?!

Posted by Bryon 5 hours, 27 minutes later

As perhaps one of the most arrogant people I know, I have a special place in my heart for other arrogant people but I expect them to have some type of grounding. I can't even fathom being as self absorbed as that a**hole. Not only did he have the prescience to know that New Orleans would eventually be flooded (that isn't really that amazing but knowing it was imminent was), but he took the neccesary steps to protect the less intelligent of his friends from you and your irresponsible choice of free hosting. At least he is going to be kind in trying not to make his friends feel like the complete morons they are when he explains why he was backing up their data.

Missed your musings while your server gone. I'd say more but I need to get my site off its free home in VA since it's too close to DC and a terrorist attack may take my photos offline.

Posted by Hoster of Binrock 3 hours, 59 minutes later

Be rest assured, Binrockers. As far as I can tell, the building that binrock is in was not damaged at all [asside from loss of power]. Not to mention, it is sitting safely tucked away in a room on the second floor behind multiple layers of walls with no windows. I don't have direct conformation because the entire county is closed and nobody is allowed back in. But the coverage of the storm on the Weather Channel was a few blocks down the street from the area and the damage looked minimal.

Posted by Me again 1 minute later

bah, you need to add an edit function. Sorry for the typos.

Posted by Dan 8 hours, 48 minutes later

That's definitely good to know. Let's just hope other important structures (like, say, your apartment) fared just as well.

Posted by jenn 13 hours, 59 minutes later

Matthew makes it sound like he was backing up our files because we are poor fools who didn't know better. (I had backups of all of my data; it's just inconvenient.) Actually, he wrote a script to grab all of the photos off my binrock space because he wanted them for his own personal use. It's great that he has backups, but I don't like that he makes it sound like he is coming to the rescue for all of us dumb sods (that's you & me, Dan). What's more, when I originally realized that the binrock server was in New Orleans, I happened to be talking to him. I mentioned that I was worried about it, and he went on and on about how there was almost no chance that the hard drive was damaged/files lost/etc. He basically told me the chances that our data was damaged were slim, so I am confused why he says in his comment that we lost all of our files when everything is up in the air.

Posted by mike. 1 day, 11 hours later

Yeah, he cornered me at Nick's and gave me the same story about backing up all of your pictures so that he could have them. I liked how he assumed I didn't keep backups of my photos on my pc/CDR's but, he was nice enough to to let me know that the hard drives probably waterproof. Interestingly I didn't know that manufacturers made waterproof harddrives or, how he new that your friend's company used that type of equipment. Anyway, I guess the gesture nice...

Posted by Jenn 13 hours, 41 minutes later

Yeah, I think he assumed the same thing about me. Of course I back up my data. But, my hard drive failed the same week that Binrock went down. Hopefully my external keeps ticking until the sever is up...

Posted by mike. 2 days, 5 hours later

"I'd say more but I need to get my site off its free home in VA since it's too close to DC and a terrorist attack may take my photos offline."

You better do that because, if the pictures of your kegerator are lost the terrorists have won.