Critical Review

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Kellemora
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Re: Critical Review

Post by Kellemora »

Amazing!
They do sell 3-1/2 floppy drives to USB ports, but they cannot make 5-1/4 floppy drives for USB, they don't have built-in controller cards.
Maybe I should get my boxes of them down off the shelf and sell them on eBay as used floppies, most with data on them.
I have hundreds of them still, plus several 3-1/2 floppies which I rarely used because I hated them, hi hi.

I'm doing good with 4-cores, hi hi. I actually preferred the 2-core CPUs over the 4-core ones. But that could be because almost all of the programs I owned could only use up to 2 cores, and that was if I was lucky, hi hi.
But I think how computers work has changed considerably, so if you have 64 cores, it will find a way to use as many as possible, hi hi.
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yogi
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Re: Critical Review

Post by yogi »

You could be right about the hardware of those 5 1/4 floppies not having a controller card. That would not be a problem for a virtualized machine. Now that I think about it simulating an 8 bit processor probably would not allow a virtual machine to run on it. Or, if it did, it would be super slow. You might have some luck trying to sell those old floppies, but I would be suspicious of their quality. The magnetic material doesn't stay in place forever.

I can see how 4 cores wold be more than enough for most things. I don't know if I would recognize any of the assembly code for 64 bit processors these days. The instruction set has got to be way different than what it was when I was writing assembly code. Addressing 32 cores probably isn't a problem. I think what they do is start a process and use up a core. Start a second process and look to see if any other cores are available. They can keep doing that up to the processor's limit. I think those 64 core machines come in handy when using peripherals, such as heavy duty GPU cards and PCIE interfaces. Then again only people who run weather prediction models would need such a thing. LOL
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Kellemora
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Re: Critical Review

Post by Kellemora »

I don't know enough about how computers work to add any info that would be valuable, and most probably be wrong anyhow.
I copied almost everything I wanted from the 5-1/4 floppies over to CDs, only to find CDs rot and can no longer be read. So that was a big waste of time. Besides, there wasn't much on them of value anyhow. Or I should say, not things I've not been able to redo over the years and now have safe and sound on multiple backups. Of which nobody will care about once I'm gone. I did however move all of my genealogy over to Ancestry and keep it updated. So anybody can view it.
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yogi
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Re: Critical Review

Post by yogi »

,,, and here you told me how much you don't trust Cloud Computing and would not be inclined to use it. Your genealogy project out on Ancestry.com is effectively storing your data in the cloud. All that hard work you put into organizing the data is preserved for anyone to access. You don't have to worry about backups or updating operating systems. It's all done for you. What you are doing there is a classic example of the advantages the cloud offers. You can even create a desktop or two or ten in the cloud which would bring you back to multiple computers at your fingertips. That would work in theory, but it most likely would have to be a subscription that gives you access to all those desktops. It's cheaper than upgrading hardware every few years, but you don't do that anyway. So paying for virtual computers would not be appropriate for you.
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Kellemora
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Re: Critical Review

Post by Kellemora »

Ancestry is FREE, unless you pay for access to data to help you build your tree, which I do by the way. But the thing is, when I stop paying, all that data is still there for anyone to access. And those I give certain rights to, can see the dates of those living which is hidden from the general public. I don't know why since most of those dates come from public records which anyone can look up and view. I guess they think it makes folks feel better to know they hide the dates on living people, hi hi.

I have DropBox but rarely use it, normally only to upload a large file for someone else to download, then it gets deleted.
And you know I've always done all of my accounting on a computer that has no Internet connection at all.
In a sense, I have used something similar to cloud storage in the past. It was an area on my ISPs server where they allocated X number of space for personal storage. But then that ISP went belly up, so it is a good thing I had a copy of everything I put up there in the storage locker.
I know a couple of folks who hit the limit on how many pictures they could put on Ancestry. Ancestry does not count the picture you use on the genealogy page of each person, but the extra pictures and files folks put in the side folders. If they didn't do that, I would start uploaded all of our family pictures to a folder that only those I assigned access to could get to them.
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yogi
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Re: Critical Review

Post by yogi »

Technically Drop Box is cloud storage, but in a very limited way. It does not offer the services that you would find on Google, Microsoft, Amazon, or Apple, for example. The beauty of Drop Box is that it is not tied to any gigantic high tech company. That doesn't make it any safer in spite of what you might think, but some people like that feature. I never did think you looked at Ancestry.com as cloud storage, but that is what it boils down to being. It's nice of them to allow permissions that you can assign and their handling of photo images seems equitable. It has everything you would want from a more sophisticated cloud storage scheme and it's free. My previous comments were just trolling you a little because you have mentioned in the past how you do not trust cloud storage even if it were free.
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Kellemora
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Re: Critical Review

Post by Kellemora »

I don't trust cloud storage, which is why I make a backup of my genealogy tree from Ancestry to my computer and backups.
Speaking of Ancestry, they were hit yesterday with a big denial of service hacker who stalled them down in their tracks.
Although Ancestry is Free, if you want to get access to the files they obtain, it costs right at 200 bucks a year.
Which is actually cheaper than any of the other genealogy display websites.
But as I just said Ancestry is a Display website, not a genealogy program, and they have almost no features a genealogy program does have.
Like you said, it's a cloud storage program to hold the work you do in a searchable database.
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