Blogadda looses my data!!

Dear Blogger Friend,

Thank you for visiting BlogAdda.com and submitting your blog.

We had an issue with our host yesterday due to which information about your blog was inadvertently affected. Your blog URL is in the records and you might have to update the rest of the information.

Kindly login at BlogAdda (http://www.blogadda.com/login

) and click on 'My Account' link on the top. You'll see the title of your blog linked. Clicking the title will expand into a few options and you can click on 'Manage' to update details of your blog.

Our apologies for the inconvenience caused and we would appreciate if you can update the blog details asap.

We would like to assure you that we take utmost care of the data and this would not happen again. We thank you for your co-operation.

Regards
Administration Team
BlogAdda.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/blogadda
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/blogadda

What happenes when you get such a mail? I get pissed off. Within a minute of getting this mail, I shot back my reply:

No need to be sorry!! I have got tonnes of work other than to re-enter my blog details on your stupid servers which can't even store this tiny winy bit of information properly.

I am logging out of blogadda. I will make sure no one in my friendlist joins or advises anyone to join such a site which doesn't value its user's data.

I know blogadda is a free blog aggregator service and they have no responsibility what-so-ever for my data. But the question remains... how the hell can they manage to loose it?

There are many ways to loose data:

1. Hacking : Someone hacked into their database and snooped off with the data. In that case I my email ID is in their hands and at the very least, I can expect to get thousands of spam emails which may or maynot have adware and malwares attached to them.
2. Backup failure: Some bozo missed out taping my data. If they have a backup policy. Which I doubt hey have.
3. Natural Disaster: The data centre was flooded and thus my data was lost.
4. Terrorist attack: The black masked terrorists came and fled off with the tapes of my data. They also deleted my entries from the database. On the second thoughts, is my second name Bush? Definitely not.

After going through all such possibilities, all I can say is that I am mesmerised by this kinda act of terrorism on my individuality. Damn it!

Oracle Buys Sun

Finally the beleaguered Sun Microsystems has got a suitor. Oracle Corp. has inked a deal to buy struggling server vendor Sun Microsystems for $9.50 per share, representing a 42.0% premium to Sun's closing price of $6.69 on Friday afternoon. This deal is worth $7.4 billion, or $5.6 billion net of Sun’s cash and debt.

What does it mean to us as a consumer? Now Oracle will own Sun's Solaris operating system, Java programming language, and servers and storage hardware systems businesses. Integrating its enterprise software products with now added server and Solaris OS it can provide a off-the-shelf ready-to-use product which you can buy, bring to your office, plugin to your network and voila! you are all set to start your applications on your server. These are exciting propositions. Oracle will be the only company with products like this, though IBM has its products on the same lines but the software products of Oracle have a greater demand.

Oracle is predicting that it will generate $2.0 billion in profits for Sun two years after signing the deal, which is expected to be sealed this summer. So it seems to be a very exciting buy after all. Looks like Larry Ellison is going to enhance his riches manifolds. He has taken a bold decision and only time will tell whether it is going to pay.

The Pirate Bay is pirated

Hmmmm... so a Napster happened to the Pirate Bay, though in a new country and by a new Judge. The defendants Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Peter Sunde, and Carl Lundstrom were all sentenced to one year in jail each and a fine to the tune of $3,620,000 is to be paid by them to the prosecutors. The plaintiffs had demanded over 100 million Crowns as damages!!


Now, coming back to the issue of Piracy, I really don't take sides. I am of the notion that every man who works hard has a right to his creation and sell it at a price he deems to be right. But what about the obscene amounts these entertainment industry guys charge us. Why should I pay for the 20 millions some jackass named Brad Pitt charges these studios? Or for that matter the 20 Crores Akshay Kumar makes for one single movie. Am I as a spectator at fault if I can't shell out the Rs 250 my local friendly PVR charges me for one show? Why won't I go for a cheaper(or shud I say free) version on the Pirate bay, Mininova, Demonoid or Torrentbox? Only if the shows were at a reasonable rate like Rs 50 or perhaps lower than that I would obviously go and watch the movie on a 75 mm screen and not on my measly 17" PC Screen.

Lets take a hypothetical scenario : Movies are available for 1$ each for download from the net, using the same technologies. Will you then go for a pirated version? I won't!! The cost of any ones conscience is always more than a dollar. This is simple economics and I don't know why these guys don't understand this. Why bleed billions of Dollars to new technologies when you can actually earn millions from it? Instead of being steadfast on not lowering the prices, these studio bosses should acknowledge the advent of technologies and smartasses who use them (or abuse them depending on which side you are on) and understand the new demand and supply conditions. Gone are the days when you can only watch new movies in the theater or wait it to be at least 3-4 months older so that your favorite TV channel broadcasts it. With the faster than light broadband speeds the movies are passed on the net even before you can properly spell the cast's names.

The studio bosses should go in for differential pricing, the first three days should be at a premium of not more than $10. Then after the first weekend the prices should come down to $1. They don't have to maintain any servers or the huge bandwidth required by using the P2P distribution systems. All they need to do is to give a authenticated torrent tracker file for a dollar. And they also save money on printing discs and transportation. I sincerely believe this would be a highly profitable model.

And if they don't heed to it then no Pirate Bay can save them. Everyday the technology and browsing speed is increasing in scope. We will have hundreds of new sites giving away these so-called copyrighted stuff for free on the net and they can't sue everyone. Already there are sites which promise IP cloaking for P2P connections. And surprise surprise... Pirate Bay is still up and running. Looks like they are not ruffled. They have safely moved their servers to Netherlands!!

Someone needs to tell them to take a long hard thought at this age old saying "Lets make friends and not enemies".