A little history and a useful tip

[Hugh Westacott]

My future wife gave me my first computer, a Mac Plus, in 1983 and I’ve never strayed from the Apple family. Because I’m computer-dumb, I’m always having problems and the cleverer of my two sons has to rescue me from time to time. I currently own three computers viz. an eleven year-old desktop iMac, an Apple G4 laptop of the same vintage passed on to me by my teenage son, and a MacMini that I got for Christmas last year.

I started writing the 5th edition of my book several years ago and it is only now almost complete. I use Adobe PageMaker on my iMac mainly because it has such a brilliant indexing tool. I looked at InDesign but decided that PageMaker, although the predecessor of InDesign, had a much better indexing tool. The only advantage InDesign had over PageMaker was vertical justification but I decided that I could not face a whole new learning process, so, although useful, I could live without it. But PageMaker won't work on my MacMini.

Recently, I’ve got nervous about the age of my iMac and feared that it might give up the ghost. Fortunately, everything is backed up  in Dropbox which, I suppose, must exist somewhere up in the sky or in the bowels of the earth. Yesterday, my worst fears were realized when I discovered that the iMac had not fired up at the appointed hour. I shook it but nothing rattled. I wondered whether it had run out of fuel, but this particular model lacks a petrol gauge so I was unable to tell. My clever son looked at it, shook his head and said ’Bad luck, Papa, it's dead, kaput and finished’.

But I would not give up. I tried comforting it in a fleece blanket and whispered words of love in its ear. I offered it strong drink and sweetmeats but it remained obstinately unresponsive. As a last resort I left it overnight in the airing cupboard to keep it warm.

I’ve long been aware that computers have no wires, apart from the connection to the power supply, so they must work by black magic. How else can I receive instant messages from my wife who is presently in Texas? So I decided to sacrifice an animal as an offering to the gods of the computer. The children tearfully begged for the cat to be spared so I listened to their entreaties and set a mouse trap. Early this morning I found a dead mouse in the trap so I hurried to the airing cupboard, retrieved my pleasantly warm computer, reconnected it to the electricity supply and it instantly fired up and is working perfectly.

I promise you that everything in the previous paragraph is the gospel truth. On at least four previous occasions this computer has failed to start and each time I’ve put it in the airing cupboard overnight and each time it worked as soon as it was reconnected.

I’m passing on this homely advice especially for the benefit of Lyle and Captain Paranoia.

Happy New Year everyone!

Hugh

The pursuit of accuracy should not be confused with pedantry. Horace

 

[adi]

Firstly I love InDesign, In fact i love all Adobe products. But I hear you re-indexing. Although InDesign has unproved its indexing feature over time. It is still manually intensive to set up. I have not used PageMaker for at least 8 years.

I used to have a couple of Apple Mac Pro's for when i was an image editor and designer, I had the same problem as you. The reason is they have a humidity sensor inside and is the air is too damp they wont turn on.

[Hugh Westacott]

Thanks for your helpful reply, Adi!

The explanation you give makes perfect sense and fits all the facts. The iMac is located close to a large picture window in my study which is situated farthest from the boiler. The first time it happened was when I returned in late December after spending three months in Texas during which time there there was no heat in the room. I hardly used my study over the Christmas period and had turned off the radiator. I don't need to remind you that it has been very wet and I suppose that the sensors were affected. It's odd that my clever son was not aware that some Macs could suffer from this problem.

The mouse died in vain and I feel dreadful (but at least the cat was spared).

Hugh

The pursuit of accuracy should not be confused with pedantry. Horace

[Lyle Brotherton]

Well, firstly Mr Westcott, congratulations on the news of your forthcoming marriage!

Secondly your words of computing wisdom are not lost with me. Similar to you Hugh, I stubbornly continued to use a laptop which frankly should have been consigned to the Victoria & Albert Museum years ago! I did so confidently, in the knowledge that every week, on an allocated day, I backed up all my work to a DVD. This practice gave me comfort until the reality of my laptop spectacularly failing one day, a blue-screen, which I now understand is a portent of extreme computer ill health, then a hard drive which froze, physically no longer operating, and all this the day before my weekly back up, which at the height of me writing the UNM left 6 days’ work lost forever; a lesson learned.

A good friend of mine suggested backing up daily to the cloud, but somehow I have never felt comfortable about all my files residing somewhere in the ether, so as an alternative I bought a Seagate Wireless Plus 1TB Portable Hard Drive which I installed in a building near, but separate from my house and in a secure location where thieves would be unlikely to find it. I encrypted the drive, so if disconnected from the power the data would be relatively secure and installed the continuous real-time backup software ViceVersa PRO.

This system has worked so well I now have a second Seagate Wireless Hard Drive which backs up the first. Overcautious, maybe, but losing the labours of hard work is I think a great problem.

[Lost Soul]

Lyle, I applaud your back up strategy.  When I am auditing companies that is the typical sort of strategy I am looking for. 

Overcautious, maybe, but losing the labours of hard work is I think a great problem.   Not in the least are you being overcautious.  The bitter experience of loosing work on a failed machine is a sure fire way of motivating oneself to adopt robust back up strategies.   I have had a couple of external back-up drives fail on me so I too now use two and have software that backs up the computer every hour.

[Hugh Westacott]

Lyle wrote

<Well, firstly Mr Westcott, congratulations on the news of your forthcoming marriage!>

I suppose a thirty-year engagement does seem rather a long time to wait but, alas, there seems to be no prospect of imminent nuptials. And we are desperate to start a family. (My New Year resolution is never again to contribute to a thread after drinking two glasses of sherry.)

I backup personal and financial documents on a memory stick rather than on Dropbox. I also have a dedicated memory stick containing all the emails exchanged with my fiancée during the last thirty years (the first one is dated 15 Jan 1983). I feel certain that few in this world have an email archive spread over so many years.

Hugh

The proper pursuit of accuracy should not be confused with pedantry. Horace

[adi]

I find backing up files is a waste of time and money. If I need a file recovered I just ring up the NSA and ask for it back!

[Lost Soul]

Nice one Adi!   

[boogyman]

Indeed, too many computer users (including professionals) do not have a good backup strategy, or have one but fail to put it into action.

And those who have a backup strategy, and put that strategy into practice, sometimes get very disappointed when they must actually use a backup.

I've seen cases where a restore of the backup had been tested exactly once, at the initial implementation of the backup process. And in a few of those cases, the restore failed consistently when tried out at a later stage...

At least two basics to think about:
- do you test your restore at regular intervals?
- do you backup a self-consistent set of data and tools required to actually "use" the data?
  for example, you'll need the decryption key(s) if your backup data are encrypted
  for example, you might need rare tool(s) to actually work with the data

Well, so far my 2p 

[Pete McK]

A good thread Hugh, because I for one admit to being lapse, even neglectful, about backing up my data and an easy New Year resolution is to now rectify this situation.

Lyle, which encryption software do you use and why please?

I suppose a thirty-year engagement does seem rather a long time to wait but, alas, there seems to be no prospect of imminent nuptials. Hang on in there Hugh

[krenaud]

I use a dual backup strategy where I have continuous backup to the cloud using CrashPlan. I use a custom encryption key so no-one at CrashPlan can access my data.

I also do a backup to an external USB drive using Apple Time Machine, this backup is also encrypted. This is done every 7-14 days depending on how lazy I am.

The encryption keys are written down on paper and stored in a fireproof safe, I also store them in an encrypted file on a cloud storage service so that I can access my backuped data if necessary.

If my computer is destroyed then CrashPlan should have all data older than 24 hours and depending on luck it will have newer files than that.

If my computer and CrashPlan fail, then I have my external USB drive which has all data older than 7-14 days.

[Lyle Brotherton]

Great comment Adi, many a true word said in jest

I steer clear of proprietary encryption software Pete after a person in the know told me that the German firm selling the popular Steganos Suite, are indirectly owned by the US Govt. Ironically the fact the US Govt could access my work does not worry me, I could do little to stop them accessing my files even if I did so there is little point in worrying. My concern is that organised crime has penetrated some of the most secure US Govt. departments. For example, the encryption keys for Airwave, the secure network based on TETRA (Terrestrial Trunked Radio) used by the police and most other Cat 1 responders, have been accessed and compromised on more than one occasion by criminal gangs.

Like most people, many of my personal details are stored on my computer, including bank details, so I opted for two public encryption systems - a sort of cryptography based on similar principals as Wikipedia - one of which is TrueCrypt, the other I will let you personally know about, and double encrypt the entire disc. In addition, there are some other novel measures I employ which, for obvious reasons, I will not divulge.

This system most certainly takes unauthorised access to my data away from petty criminals and probably more organised crime. Again, using supercomputers, major government intelligence agencies could access this data if the really wanted to, and again this does not really concern me.

As a footnote, I continue to be astounded by just how much personal data people are prepared to make public via the internet, wittingly or unwittingly, from Mother’s maiden names and first pet’s names to their bank account numbers and sort codes, and we all know which organisations use these types of questions to allow you access!   

[captain paranoia]

Encryption of disks is all well and good, but you will will need access to the plain text version at some point.  And, unless the software that handles the plain text files is good at housekeeping, there's a very good chance that there's a copy of the file left behind in a 'temp' directory somewhere...  Microsoft is particularly bad at this.

Bank account numbers and sort codes must be considered public domain information, since they feature on your debit card and cheques, and can therefore be skimmed with ease.  Your date of birth and mother's maiden name are also public domain, and any organisation that accepts them as security information is to be regarded as dangerously naive about security.  And that will include your bank...  One problem is that your bank might need your real DOB, for tax reasons, and they don't distinguish between this use and the 'security' use.

As for Hugh's ailing Mac, it may well be a humidity sensor, but all the hits I found were about complaints about Apple refusing to honour warranty because of a 3M humidity indicator strip; it may be that there are so many hits for this that they swamp any references to genuine electronic humidity sensors in Macs...

[adi]

The heaver the encryption the more likely the authorities will show an interest. And as Lyle said they can crack it.

With US law changing to allow the searching of electronic equipment without reason at it's borders it is probably wise to travel with a clean laptop with only the documents you need. Sadly for most people it is expensive to have clean electronics. However this is the advice I have given all my business clients for the years.

If you need personal or secure documents whilst you are away it is best to store them on line and if you open the file that you clear it from your caches when finished using it. Also password protest you hardware. But also password protect your FTP or File sharing site and use the password. Don't have the application running in the back ground all the time. 

There is software that deletes and cleans your pc on every shutdown, some delete the files in history, caches and other places then it over rights the clear space and then deletes this information. The more passes the software makes the less likely the data can be recovered. But if you chose this option for your travels then have a small capacity hard drive in your computer, this is a lot quicker to clean and you are less likely to get frustrated with it and turn it off. 

Finally never put anyone else's Memory stick into your computer.  The Stuxnet virus used to attack nuclear facilities in Iran by making  the bearings of centrifuges and other motors fail is thought to be delivered by a CD or memory stick by agent or even possible dropped from an over flying plane. It is human nature to plug a found memory stick in to see what is on it. People attacking computers know this and use it to their advantage.

Back in the early 90's when the rage was to have mini CD business cards it is thought that a huge percentage of secure computer systems where infiltrated in such a manor.     

[krenaud]

Adi,
In spite of all revelations about NSA there is no evidence or even hints that they can break properly implemented AES encryption. That's why they've had to work with companies to put back doors weakening random number generators etc.

I will continue to use encryption since the most probable threat is a regular thief and they definitely cannot break it and the odds are high that the NSA cannot break it either though I can't see why they'd want to try.