I thought it was over, but then David Friend, CEO of Carbonite had to go and make some good points that I felt it only fair I should recognize.

Carbonite and Mozy target fundamentally different sets of users. Mozy feels more “Power User-y” because it has more knobs and buttons and whistles, but Carbonite’s interface is much simpler. I think that was one of the factors that made me a little miffed when I was trying to use it was that it didn’t explain why it wouldn’t backup files on my external drive, the menu just simply wasn’t there. It made me feel like something was wrong.

I claimed Mozy’s interface is “way better”, but in truth it’s way better for me. If I were to setup a backup software on my mom’s or dad’s computer (which I have been considering), I would definately go with Carbonite, for the same reason that I prefer Mozy: the buttons and knobs (or lack thereof). Carbonite also has a faster restore time, which would probably confuse my parents less. (”I can’t get to my file backups for how long!? Why? Why aren’t they in the tubes?”), I don’t know how long the restore time is in Mozy, I haven’t had a chance to use the restore part yet, but from what I understand there is some waiting involved.

A critical part of my needs though is backup of my external drive, because I bought my computer with a really wimpy drive in it because I got a good deal and I just use my external drive for all my storage. I don’t have a 200GB mp3 library, I just have my photos on it and my documents. I need to back that up. Carbonite can’t (currently) do that, so to me it’s an unacceptable option.

So Spin The Choice and make your own decision as to which feature set you need and which backup service is best for you. I know several people using each service, and all of them are happy. I don’t know anyone who has Mozy or Carbonite who isn’t happy with it. People who aren’t happy are those that don’t do backups and lose lots of data. So I think it’s well worth having one, whichever one. Both make backing up your data retardedly easy.

Me? I currently feel dirty for spending upwards of $8 on a jar of super fancy pineapple salsa.

I will now right the same self-righteous diatriabe about Java coding conventions that every other coder on Earth has written.

These are specific to Java, I firmly believe in modifying my coding style to fit a language.

Step 1: Class Naming

I just saw an java class named Active_object. I’m not even kidding. It was like being stabbed in the eyes. Underscores do not belong in Java. It’s that simple.

Secondly, it wasn’t even Active_Object. Proper naming: ActiveObject.

Step 2: Braces

Everyone has their braces style. Stricly speaking I should be using the Java convention, but I hate the java convention. I can never find the opening brace, so I do this:

public void method()
{
System.out.println("Donkey");
}

never do I do this:

public void method() {
System.out.println("Donkey");
}

because to me, it looks so ugly. Ugh. Of course I’m scarred by 2 years of working in the deepest inner bowels of an interpreter written for a functional programming language written in C. *shivers*

Step 3: Variable Naming

Variable names are not places in which to store metadata. Examples: mField, bConnected. Ow.

The “no underscores” argument applies here as well. properlyNamedVariable not improperly_named_variable.

Step 4: Conclusion

“Coding styles are like !#*holes, everybody has one, but nobody wants to touch anybody elses.”

Update: Please also read part 3 before you make your online backup service selection.

In my previous entry on this topic, I described my problems with online backup services Carbonite and Mozy. Interestingly enough, both companies contacted me with regards to my post.

Carbonite’s CEO David Friend (or rather, I suspect, a PR firm masquerading as David Friend Update (Oct. 27, 2007): it was not a PR firm but actually David Friend, CEO of Carbonite. My bad.) commented on my blog in reply to my complaints. You can view the exchange here. I can understand not supporting backup from network drives, but I have a great deal of difficulty understanding the choice to not support backup from external drives. External drives are not uncommon with home users.

Thankfully Mozy does not suffer from these shortcomings. Bryan Fultz from Mozy contacted me directly offering me support on getting my Mozy installation to function. That impressed me a great deal.

It made a big impression on me that Carbonite was more concerned with their image than with backing up my files, while Mozy was more concerned with troubleshooting my installation and getting my data backed up.

Today, Mozy won one more paying customer.

BTW- Now that Mozy is setup and functioning, I can safely say from personal experience that the interface is way better than Carbonite’s.

This semester I am taking a Graduate Colloquium Class which consists of attending various seminars presented through the department and writing a short report about each one. It’s designed to give students an idea of what is going on in the research community. I have decided to include my reports in on this blog, as someone may be interested in them.

Presentation on the Computing Research Association given at the University of Houston Computer Science Department

Presenter:
Dr. Andrew Bernat
Executive Director
Computing Research Association
10/24/2007

Dr. Andrew Bernat presented on the work the Computer Research Association (CRA) performs to advance the status of computing education and research. The Computing Research Association aims to benefit those in the computing research fields which include Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Information Technology. Their efforts are specifically targeted towards lobbying to influence governmental policy with respect to funding, providing resources which aid in fostering communities within the computing research field, and encouraging and facilitating the development of “human resources” in the form of educated persons. They employ various channels such as online and print newsletters, career postings, and blogs in order to disseminate information about their efforts and successes.

In order to further the community building aspect of their mission, the CRA hosts a biennial conference of department chairs from Ph.D. granting institutions in North America. They also have a series of programs and conferences for the advancement of women and minorities in computing research. In North America there is a great deal of disparity between the numbers of men and women enrolled in computing education programs.

Dr. Bernat also presented some interesting data concerning the trends related towards the number of computer science degrees produced and degrees declared nationwide. There was a significant decrease in the number of students declaring a computer science major after the dot-com bubble burst; however, that number appears to have either reached a plateau or increased slightly according to the latest data.

The CRA’s current efforts to influence governmental policy with respect to funding of computing research were also discussed. He presented compelling evidence in the form of brief case studies of research projects becoming billion-dollar industries that an overwhelming portion of economic growth in recent years is due directly to the growth of information technology industries.

Any attempt to build community and garner governmental support for computing research initiatives will prove to be of great benefit to the computing community as a whole. However, it is possible to envision some of their programs being rather controversial as they ultimately hope to fundamentally change the landscape of computing research.

Below are some related comments which would not fit the orignal report.

Many political factors influence the success and failure of CRA’s initiatives, and Dr. Bernat discussed the significant role they had in garnering acceptance for the American Competitiveness Initiative, an initiative designed to guarantee the United States’ competitive abilities in the future which included a hefty increase in research funding over ten years. Although many factors played their part in garnering more money for research and education programs, the CRA was able to obtain data which helped to create a negative PR storm with respect to funding of research.

Programs which I found particularly interesting are the CRA-W and the CDC which aim to promote the interests of women and minorities respectively in the computing disciplines.

This semester I am taking a Graduate Colloquium Class which consists of attending various seminars presented through the department and writing a short report about each one. It’s designed to give students an idea of what is going on in the research community. I have decided to include my reports in on this blog, as someone may be interested in them.

Interactive Physically Based Simulation
Dr. John Keyser
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Texas A&M University
10/01/2007

Dr. Keyser presented his work on Interactive Physically Based Simulations. The goal of his work is to produce real-time simulations which are not physically accurate but are good enough estimates to be visually believable.

Dr. Keyser discussed the differences between a real-time estimation and a physically accurate simulation in the context of applications. A training simulator for example may require real-time simulation whereas aerospace simulations require physical accuracy. An aerodynamics engineer will not be overly concerned as to whether or not his simulation is real-time if the results are completely wrong even if they are visually believable. His work also has applicability in the computer graphics domain, as it is beneficial for an artist to control scriptable elements. Scriptable elements are much easier to control than initial condition simulations. It’s difficult to understand how changes in initial conditions will affect the end result, so a physically accurate simulation is not of much use to an artist creating graphics for a movie.

Real-time simulation is achieved through simplification of the underlying simulation models, and through a careful decoupling of the various models. A particular simulation may be represented as several models in the computer in order to simulate the various effects taking place. Knowing which model depends on which other models, it is possible to minimize inter-model communication as time progresses. Real-time for his case is defined as a usable “action:response” cycle frequency with the simulation system.

Dr. Keyser showed various examples of his work including a fire simulation which included fuel concentration, smoke, and deformation of objects (such as matches). He also displayed a stunning water simulation which, in certain scenarios, was relatively close to a physically correct simulation. It used wave particles to simulate the waves spreading across the surface which was then rendered using a grid based approach. The use of a particle based system allowed hardware acceleration and provided nice looking results and a real-time interaction rate when using up to 300,000 particles simultaneously.

Update: Please also read part 2 and part 3 for my complete take on online backup services.

Ok, so I’m a little OCD at times… especially when making purchases. It took me almost an hour to pick out a pair of cowboy boots when I was at Allen’s Boots in Austin last time my partner and I went on vacation. I am picky. I like things to be nice and to live up to my expectations.

I’ve been waffling between Carbonite and Mozy for like a week. It’s 5$/mo, in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t really matter. If one sucks I can switch. But that’s me. I try to minimize these tendencies, but sometimes I just can’t let go.

Here’s the breakdown of what I learned before I got into either.

Mozy

• Better client
• Has varying levels of service (Free/Home/Business)
• Recently bought by EMC
• 5$/mo, 60$/year

Carbonite

• Cheaper (50$/year)
• Bad Logo
• Single level of service

This is what I’d heard inferred from the blogs, reviews, and company websites. I flip and flop, and actually create my Mozy account, download and install the software, only to at the last minute change my mind and uninstall it without configuring it and decide I want Carbonite. I was scared by the EMC acquisition a little. I thought they might want to make it more corporate and less home user friendly. This was compounded by their already tiered pricing schedule. I don’t understand how a business needs to pay $0.50/GB/mo but a home user has a flat rate. A larger business would probably use more yes, but a home business is probably going to use about the same as a home user. It seemed a bit lawyer-y to me, and with the acquisition by EMC I only foresaw that getting worse.

So I installed Carbonite, set it up, and then went to go try to back up my external 500GB drive. That’s when Carbonite FAILED. They don’t support backing up external and/or removable drives. They just don’t. The application (which is kind of annoying and only seems to exist as an explorer extension. I couldn’t find any interface which let me just select folders and see what folders are already selected) simply didn’t register my external hard drive as something it could back up. Then I checked their support website (which for me at this exact moment is generating errors instead of search results about 4 out of 5 times I try to search) and found this customer support article. They don’t support backup of external devices.

“Check back soon for a Carbonite service plan that will allow you to back up your external drives.” Yeah I probably won’t.

Ugly!

And another thing, unrelated to their performance as a backup service, but perhaps of their performance in the marketplace: their logo is ugly. It’s this weird lock that looks like a 3rd grader drew it. A backup service’s logo should instill feelings of “Your data is safe. You have nothing to worry about. We are rock solid and hardcore.” This logo makes me feel like “Your data will be colored on and hung on the side of the refrigerator.”

Ok, then I did a system restore to get all that crap off my computer and then installed Mozy. Straight out of the install, it says it can’t connect to the service. I check, the service is running. It simply won’t connect. Shey says check my firewall, I add the program according to the Mozy support article on firewalls. Still no go. I have to disable my windows firewall in order for it to work. That’s awesome.

So right now I am not a happy camper. I just want to backup my data. I think I can get Mozy to work with a little more futzing with firewall settings. I was planning on paying for it, but for right now, I’m just going to back up my doc files and use the free version until I’m sure it’s not completely worthless.

I know one thing for certain. Neither of these services is nice, and neither of them have lived up to my expectations.

*sigh*

So there is this interview over at JavaLobby with Ken Russell discussing the new Java browser plugin. Go ahead… go read it… I’ll wait…

*waits*

Ok, they’re just now writing a new browser plugin for java? I have a friend (a user, not a programmer) who absolutely swears java is horrible because of his experience with it. Everytime I hit a webpage with a java applet, my browser freezes for like 20 seconds, and maybe 1 out of 5 times the entire thing will just crash. Unfortunately experiences such as this are many people’s primary experience with java. They see a java logo on a webpage, and their browser freezes/crashes. Great PR.

I’m excited about a new plugin, but I’m excited about it from a user perspective. I think it is personally too little too late. The idea that java inside a browser is horrible is already firmly entrenched. There would have to be some huge killer app(let) necessary to convince the world otherwise.

Imagine if they had rewritten the browser plugin back when they should have. Imagine a YouTube powered by java instead of flash.

But now? It’s already been done. Java is doing something that’s already been done by everyone else a couple generations ago. Java is behind the curve, yet again.

Developers Needed:

LMAL - Light Microscopy Automation Library

LMAL is an Open Source Java library for the automation of common tasks performed on a standard light microscope including such features as slide scanning, autofocus, spectral image acquisition, Z-stack image acquisition, and time-lapse capture. It aims to provide a standard API for manipulating microscope hardware irrespective of manufacturer and provide a standard framework on top of which light microscopy applications and experiments can be designed and executed.

It’s hard sometimes to find help when writing code. You know there is a way to do something, but you probably don’t know the name of it.

I found a handy dandy website: Java Practices.

A great list of “best” practices when developing in Java. I like.