Following a short post on g+, and a short rant on Facebook, I decided to fill out the idea a bit more.
Where is the internet we grew up with?
For those of us in our 30s, the internet was fresh and shiny in the late nineties (for some, earlier). Altavista was a search engine of choice, eBay and Amazon were in their infancy. Hotmail was just getting serious and Facebook had probably not really even been thought of. Like many others, I had a geocities page, and life seemed good. It was the new digital frontier. Rough and ready, available to be shaped by anyone who could come along and take ahold of the new emerging technologies.
Before long, eBay and Amazon become the power-houses they are today. Many other internet ideas came and went, most of them because they just weren't all that compelling, some because of bad business management.
Here we stand, looking into 2012. What is the internet today? Who's hot, and who's not?
Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tubmlr, today's engines of "Social Media". eBay and Amazon, what feel like two of the last vanguard of the old ways. Amazon always had a great business case: sell stuff cheap through economies of scale, great shipping and a superior customer experience. People can buy anything they want in a few clicks (1-click maybe), and have it at their door in hours. Gone are the days of 28 days for shipping. Instant gratification for just about any kind of thing you can want (more or less). eBay, once a giant auction site is pretty far down the slope of decline. They are now charging such high fees, and their site has been encumbered with so much commercial content that regular Joe auctions are buried amongst the dross. Wierdly, they feel like they are trying to be Amazon, except that Amazon is already Amazon, and does a darn good job of it. In my opinion, unless eBay wises up fast, they are going to end up holding a bag of stuff with nowhere left to go. People using eBay are complaining more and more, and shifting ways of selling things to other venues like Craig's list. At this point unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be much else in public view that presents as an alternative to eBay. It is hard to create a vacuum in such a large market, but eBay is pulling the air out of what used to be their core business model. If that vacuum gets to a critical level, a whole slew of new blood will enter the market, and eBay's dominance will shatter under the pressure their vacuum has created leaving them with what exactly? A not-quite-as-good-as-amazon for sale site?
Flickr seems to be doing okay, but it's photo presence have been significantly eroded by Facebook itself and other sites like Picassa and for serious photographers, pay sites like SmugMug who do a much much better job than Flickr with content management, presentation and semi-pro features.
For many, Facebook has become the internet. Twitter is an add on, and Tubmlr a fascination.
I don't know how things are at Twitter financially, I'm not up on that so much, but I hope things are holding up for them. It's a neat medium, but I'm not sure many people understand why. I think it might be that 140 character limit. It's a nice short tweet. Not intrusive, something you can glance at without being completely distracted from whatever else you are doing. It's the essence of tl;dr. Perfection for a world with ADD. I hope they don't cook what I believe to be their golden goose.
Facebook is in a precarious position. Sitting atop the chaos of the modern age. The hate for Facebook is pretty big, and whilst Google plus impressed some people, there hasn't been the mass exodus that many had hoped for, or predicted. Google screwed up the name situation. I feel they had good reasons, but ultimately, it shot them in the foot. I know that many of the technorati, the people who could make or break it, are the same people who are idealists, and who care about those kind of details. These are the people who still remember the way Facebook has betrayed them year over year. The name situation made them feel that Google was incompetent and didn't "get it". With them deserting in droves, Google Plus may never be more than a sideshow.
I have to say that so far, I haven't really embraced Tumblr. My daughter has a Tumblr, and so do a few other people I know. I forget if I have created one or not.
What does the next decade of the internet look like? What kinds of things will shape it? Some say the API revolution is a big deal. I'm not so sure. APIs require skill to use, and the number of students taking computer science courses at universities has been dropping off. The software industry was one place the 99% were promised a bright future, and honestly, it's still one place they might be able to get it. The API trend I worry is something being driven by the big players. The corporately dominated players. Those that can afford to do API things without compromising their core business model.
What is going on to combat this movement towards utter corporate dominance of the internet of the next decade? I think there is still room for a few garage-built systems to make a hit. People aren't taking a leaf out of Apple's book. Make new technologies, create new revenue streams, future-proof your company by always living in the future. Until they do, the bright and the young can always be a step ahead. The question is if their one-step ahead is really one-step ahead, or one step sideways.
There are some innovations in the software space that are helping with this, things like Ruby on Rails and it's software cousins of a similar ilk. These systems are making it possible for the garage bands to make their dreams happen quicker and easier. I'm concerned that some of this 'innovation' is more like a step sideways than a step forward. People are exchanging tried and tested methodologies for bleeding edge systems relying on "the cloud" to build their ideas into reality. This wouldn't be so bad, but the big promise of the cloud, on demand scalability, is an empty promise for DIY programmers. To achieve real scalability takes knowledge and experience, especially within that environment. For Joe average, this is not present.
The young and the bright can be a step ahead, or a step sideways, but with current technology, hitting a glass ceiling happens too fast. With so many internet users, it takes only one tsunami to hit the shores of your fledgling system to bring it down, where too often it will stay down with no path to recovery. What used to be a quick incremental increase in traffic is today a massive exponential rush. A site can go "viral" in 24 hours or less, and go from a few thousand users to a million people crushing the system. Without experience, it's pretty hard for Joe average to deal with that. The bar to enter the Cyclone that is today's internet has become very high indeed.
How do we solve this problem? I think for some that is the $64,000 question. How do you scale with such rapidity? Systems like MongoDB are being pushed as potential answers. They work in the cloud (more or less), and offer what seems like a good proposition. Unfortunately, they can't do 80% of what a traditional SQL database can do, and once you start growing, that 80% becomes really important. Things like reporting and data warehousing that can help you understand your website users who are now your customers. Other technologies like Map-Reduce are impressive, but most folks don't understand the real value-proposition for Map-Reduce, and worse, most Joe average programmers aren't fluent in the ways of functional programming. Heck, I know very few CompSci grads who can put together programs in a functional style after a decade in the field working declarative systems in Java and others. Lisp and SML and similar are thought on with a level of slight revulsion, a bad college memory of what seems like an arcane way to do things.
So what now? I don't yet know, and that's half the fun! It's undiscovered territory, and no-one really knows what will happen next.
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
On Steve Jobs
I'm writing this more as a meta-post than a post, in and of itself.
I could wax lyrical about the way Jobs and Apple has impacted my life, but it would be the same as thousands of other stories, and therein lies some of what I'm interested in talking about.
A number of criticisms have been leveled at Jobs, and Apple. Some of the favorites are the walled-garden haters, the overpriced gadget shouters, the Jobs-is-an-evil-capitalist hecklers and the what did Steve Jobs ever do for me crowd, who need to go watch some Monty Python and think about things a little more carefully.
Apple's walled garden, or so it's labelled is a remarkable feat of FUD. The garden that is wide open, that you can enter, or leave at any time you please. Buy an iPhone, if you hate it, then buy something else. This walled garden that includes Netflix, and vimeo, most major TV networks, internet radio, and even free software. Your walled garden is run on an open source operating system, and an open source browser. Your walled garden can export files to Excel or Word and that can browse any website. Look at your own garden, be it Microsoft or Linux. You are more walled in than those in the Apple garden! IE, constantly lagging in standards, Linux applications that can't or won't important foreign file formats properly, Windows that has no app store, no way for you to share your idea with the world easily, Linux, that requires amazingly arcane knowledge to operate on any long-term basis successfully.
Apple's overpriced gadget shouters are apparently missing a fundamental principle of the free market: things are only worth what people will pay for them. If Apple's gadgets were truly overpriced, then very few would buy them. As it happens, Apple's phones still make up a very significant portion of the market, despite making no more than two models at any given time with one Operating System variant. Two models vs the hundreds of devices practically given away by every network provider out there. Two vs 100s. I can't imagine how anyone can label this is anything short of amazing. This is Thermopylae all over again, except that as of today, the Spartans are winning, and aren't looking like being shaken any time soon. Despite giving consumers less choice and a more expensive device with fewer carriers, Apple's product is wildly successful. This doesn't seem like the mark of an overpriced gadget. We could run the same comparisons on the rest of the Apple product line. Walk through an airport sometime and observe the number of folks carrying a MacBook of some kind. How many other 11" devices are there that come close to the MacBook air for flexibility, power and usability for a business traveler?
Steve Jobs has been both applauded and demonized by the Wall Street capitalists, and mostly for the same things. He doesn't not create product to drive profit. Every model we have today for building stuff say you should increase profits by providing the widest appeal at the lowest cost. That you don't bring out new products that undermine your own markets. That your R&D funding should shrink relative to your overall cost structure. Steve Jobs broke every single one of these rules. If Steve Jobs is a rampant capitalist, then we have to seriously reconsider our notion of capitalism as it stands today.
As for the "what did Steve Jobs ever do for us" crowd, I refer you to the Monty Python sketch from the life of Brian which had a similar theme about the Romans, and more ironically perhaps, the inane arguing amongst the factions of freedom fighters over such petty things as their names. Apple has driven personal technology innovation for a decade. I don't know precisely which things they invented themselves per se, but they did as least identify products that had the potential to be game-changers, and bring them to market more quickly and with more elegance than anyone else. The early iPods with their touch-dial interface and remarkably tiny hard drives. The iMac that has shown again and again the power of a computer you can purchase, set on your desk, plug in a power cable, and increasingly fewer others, turn on and start doing cool stuff out of the box. The bundled software, the usability, these things have still not been achieved by any other vendors. If they were easy to do, then why aren't both Windows and Ubuntu doing better? They've had almost a decade to consider the situation, and are still failing miserably. The Apple TV, which has a level of integration and simplicity that made this kind of device possible, and usable. The courage to put IPS displays in all its devices, something that is still lacking on other manufacturers, and one reason that Apple devices have been considered overpriced gadgets. Steve Jobs gave you a screen that was capable of displaying your photos and videos as they were captured, without awfully over saturating them and driving up contrast, but just as they are. I'm constantly astounded at how much I have to exaggerate features in my photographs for those will 'normal' screens.
Walk into a modern office building. Listen for awhile. Sooner or later you'll here what happens when a major meeting approaches. The synchronous chime of the iPhones all indicating to their owners that a meeting is approaching is almost eery. Many of them never having had their defaults changed provides an audible witness to the impact that Steve Jobs and Apple have on our lives today. The very point of Apple's walled garden is to get the minutiae out of your way. Let you do what you love to do, assuming it's not theming your window manager... again.
I've heard the 'Macs are for creative people, not for office or development'. In 2011 this angle is ridiculous. Out of the box, the Mac comes with development tools for several major languages, including Java, Python and Ruby. With an Xcode download, you get the full suite of compilers and tools if you really really want to build C, C++ or Objective-C applications for a fraction of the cost of Visual Studio. Apple's numbers and Pages are much easier to use than Microsoft Office, and their tablet counterparts are a demonstration of what is possible on a tablet once you rethink and realize that there is no longer a viable pointing device. The amount of time I've had to sit and troubleshoot a fellow developer's Windows environment because something just stopped working is horrible. It feels like many of them have opted to get a Mac out of embarrassment as much as anything, and didn't live to regret it.
You can't walk down the street, ride the tube or sit in an office without seeing their devices, to deny the impact that Steve Jobs and Apple have had on technology just seems like it can only be the vantage of a blind man.
I don't love Apple, I don't worship Steve Jobs, but I'm not blind either. I have four Apple devices within reach as I write this, my high-end PC laptop gathering dust in a corner somewhere, largely forgotten.
I could wax lyrical about the way Jobs and Apple has impacted my life, but it would be the same as thousands of other stories, and therein lies some of what I'm interested in talking about.
A number of criticisms have been leveled at Jobs, and Apple. Some of the favorites are the walled-garden haters, the overpriced gadget shouters, the Jobs-is-an-evil-capitalist hecklers and the what did Steve Jobs ever do for me crowd, who need to go watch some Monty Python and think about things a little more carefully.
Apple's walled garden, or so it's labelled is a remarkable feat of FUD. The garden that is wide open, that you can enter, or leave at any time you please. Buy an iPhone, if you hate it, then buy something else. This walled garden that includes Netflix, and vimeo, most major TV networks, internet radio, and even free software. Your walled garden is run on an open source operating system, and an open source browser. Your walled garden can export files to Excel or Word and that can browse any website. Look at your own garden, be it Microsoft or Linux. You are more walled in than those in the Apple garden! IE, constantly lagging in standards, Linux applications that can't or won't important foreign file formats properly, Windows that has no app store, no way for you to share your idea with the world easily, Linux, that requires amazingly arcane knowledge to operate on any long-term basis successfully.
Apple's overpriced gadget shouters are apparently missing a fundamental principle of the free market: things are only worth what people will pay for them. If Apple's gadgets were truly overpriced, then very few would buy them. As it happens, Apple's phones still make up a very significant portion of the market, despite making no more than two models at any given time with one Operating System variant. Two models vs the hundreds of devices practically given away by every network provider out there. Two vs 100s. I can't imagine how anyone can label this is anything short of amazing. This is Thermopylae all over again, except that as of today, the Spartans are winning, and aren't looking like being shaken any time soon. Despite giving consumers less choice and a more expensive device with fewer carriers, Apple's product is wildly successful. This doesn't seem like the mark of an overpriced gadget. We could run the same comparisons on the rest of the Apple product line. Walk through an airport sometime and observe the number of folks carrying a MacBook of some kind. How many other 11" devices are there that come close to the MacBook air for flexibility, power and usability for a business traveler?
Steve Jobs has been both applauded and demonized by the Wall Street capitalists, and mostly for the same things. He doesn't not create product to drive profit. Every model we have today for building stuff say you should increase profits by providing the widest appeal at the lowest cost. That you don't bring out new products that undermine your own markets. That your R&D funding should shrink relative to your overall cost structure. Steve Jobs broke every single one of these rules. If Steve Jobs is a rampant capitalist, then we have to seriously reconsider our notion of capitalism as it stands today.
As for the "what did Steve Jobs ever do for us" crowd, I refer you to the Monty Python sketch from the life of Brian which had a similar theme about the Romans, and more ironically perhaps, the inane arguing amongst the factions of freedom fighters over such petty things as their names. Apple has driven personal technology innovation for a decade. I don't know precisely which things they invented themselves per se, but they did as least identify products that had the potential to be game-changers, and bring them to market more quickly and with more elegance than anyone else. The early iPods with their touch-dial interface and remarkably tiny hard drives. The iMac that has shown again and again the power of a computer you can purchase, set on your desk, plug in a power cable, and increasingly fewer others, turn on and start doing cool stuff out of the box. The bundled software, the usability, these things have still not been achieved by any other vendors. If they were easy to do, then why aren't both Windows and Ubuntu doing better? They've had almost a decade to consider the situation, and are still failing miserably. The Apple TV, which has a level of integration and simplicity that made this kind of device possible, and usable. The courage to put IPS displays in all its devices, something that is still lacking on other manufacturers, and one reason that Apple devices have been considered overpriced gadgets. Steve Jobs gave you a screen that was capable of displaying your photos and videos as they were captured, without awfully over saturating them and driving up contrast, but just as they are. I'm constantly astounded at how much I have to exaggerate features in my photographs for those will 'normal' screens.
Walk into a modern office building. Listen for awhile. Sooner or later you'll here what happens when a major meeting approaches. The synchronous chime of the iPhones all indicating to their owners that a meeting is approaching is almost eery. Many of them never having had their defaults changed provides an audible witness to the impact that Steve Jobs and Apple have on our lives today. The very point of Apple's walled garden is to get the minutiae out of your way. Let you do what you love to do, assuming it's not theming your window manager... again.
I've heard the 'Macs are for creative people, not for office or development'. In 2011 this angle is ridiculous. Out of the box, the Mac comes with development tools for several major languages, including Java, Python and Ruby. With an Xcode download, you get the full suite of compilers and tools if you really really want to build C, C++ or Objective-C applications for a fraction of the cost of Visual Studio. Apple's numbers and Pages are much easier to use than Microsoft Office, and their tablet counterparts are a demonstration of what is possible on a tablet once you rethink and realize that there is no longer a viable pointing device. The amount of time I've had to sit and troubleshoot a fellow developer's Windows environment because something just stopped working is horrible. It feels like many of them have opted to get a Mac out of embarrassment as much as anything, and didn't live to regret it.
You can't walk down the street, ride the tube or sit in an office without seeing their devices, to deny the impact that Steve Jobs and Apple have had on technology just seems like it can only be the vantage of a blind man.
I don't love Apple, I don't worship Steve Jobs, but I'm not blind either. I have four Apple devices within reach as I write this, my high-end PC laptop gathering dust in a corner somewhere, largely forgotten.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Windows 8 - iPad Killer, PC Killer, or just another fad
Ars Technica has an interesting article about the potential market and purview of Windows 8:
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/08/a-sort-of-pc-how-windows-8-will-invade-tablets-and-why-it-might-work.ars?comments=1&p=21997821#comment-21997821
I can't help but feel this article is rather missing the point of a tablet, and also the limitations of technology at present.
Use Case: I want to edit a complex Excel document for a presentation.
Requirements: Highly portable device, long battery life, fully functional keyboard, pointing device, sophisticated user interface, rapid software response rate
Can a tablet meet this use case. No. And here's why:
Slow CPU (comparatively)
Limited Storage
No pointing Device
No Keyboard
Let's look at the last two, as it's reasonable to challenge those. No pointing device, and no keyboard. You can have a keyboard and pointing device connected via bluetooth. But why would you want to? Even Apple's super slim keyboard design isn't all that compact, and a mouse isn't very compact either, being rather fat. Now you need a bag to carry these accessories and this solution is looking considerably inferior to a light portable laptop.
The best solution to this use case is a device like the MacBook Air. Why?
Portable: check
Long Battery: check (relative to other laptops at least)
Pointing device: check
Full Keyboard: check
Sophisticated UI: check
Rapid software Response: check
Economically, if you're doing this, you probably don't have an entry level iPad. MacBook Air starts at $1000, and iPads top out at $850? The Air has dramatically more power, storage, screen real estate. Better keyboard, trackpad, and isn't all that much heavier.
The cost difference just isn't that big given the functional difference, and if you're a business user with this requirement, I'm guessing even a $500 difference is bordering on meaningless.
If this is really the functionality you want. Buy a laptop, not a tablet.
Add on the other use cases that this kind of user has, and the tablet isn't really a contender at all. How often would a tablet form factor be better than a laptop for this user. Hardly ever. This user doesn't want a tablet that's also a laptop, they want a laptop that's occasionally a tablet. They have these if that's what you really want, they're laptops with touch screens.
One device simply cannot rule them all. That's life. There's a reason there are 60 kinds of Spaghetti sauce at the grocery store. Different people like different things. The really sad thing to me, is that there are 60, not 20, which would satisfy the market, and leave room for different kinds of items beyond spaghetti sauce that would also appeal to a customer.
http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/08/a-sort-of-pc-how-windows-8-will-invade-tablets-and-why-it-might-work.ars?comments=1&p=21997821#comment-21997821
I can't help but feel this article is rather missing the point of a tablet, and also the limitations of technology at present.
Use Case: I want to edit a complex Excel document for a presentation.
Requirements: Highly portable device, long battery life, fully functional keyboard, pointing device, sophisticated user interface, rapid software response rate
Can a tablet meet this use case. No. And here's why:
Slow CPU (comparatively)
Limited Storage
No pointing Device
No Keyboard
Let's look at the last two, as it's reasonable to challenge those. No pointing device, and no keyboard. You can have a keyboard and pointing device connected via bluetooth. But why would you want to? Even Apple's super slim keyboard design isn't all that compact, and a mouse isn't very compact either, being rather fat. Now you need a bag to carry these accessories and this solution is looking considerably inferior to a light portable laptop.
The best solution to this use case is a device like the MacBook Air. Why?
Portable: check
Long Battery: check (relative to other laptops at least)
Pointing device: check
Full Keyboard: check
Sophisticated UI: check
Rapid software Response: check
Economically, if you're doing this, you probably don't have an entry level iPad. MacBook Air starts at $1000, and iPads top out at $850? The Air has dramatically more power, storage, screen real estate. Better keyboard, trackpad, and isn't all that much heavier.
The cost difference just isn't that big given the functional difference, and if you're a business user with this requirement, I'm guessing even a $500 difference is bordering on meaningless.
If this is really the functionality you want. Buy a laptop, not a tablet.
Add on the other use cases that this kind of user has, and the tablet isn't really a contender at all. How often would a tablet form factor be better than a laptop for this user. Hardly ever. This user doesn't want a tablet that's also a laptop, they want a laptop that's occasionally a tablet. They have these if that's what you really want, they're laptops with touch screens.
One device simply cannot rule them all. That's life. There's a reason there are 60 kinds of Spaghetti sauce at the grocery store. Different people like different things. The really sad thing to me, is that there are 60, not 20, which would satisfy the market, and leave room for different kinds of items beyond spaghetti sauce that would also appeal to a customer.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
External Hardrives
I am once again in the market for an external hard drive. I am a bit of a content whore, and I'm addicted to iTunes. Most of our TV viewing is done through either Netflix streaming or iTunes, and my music collection is slowly being migrated to purchased music on iTunes if it wasn't bought there in the first place
My primary drive is 1TB and I have an external content drive that clocks in around 2TB. Neither is 100% full, and I've been okay with a 3TB backup drive operating through Time Machine.
I purchased a Seagate unit about six months back, and it seemed to be working Okay until I had a system failure, whereupon it quit on me. I was able to get data off it, though only by using some pretty low level access. I decided to replace it with a pair of Western
Digital drives, and put them in a RAID mirror. Well, it was a nice idea, and whilst OS X does have a software Raid feature, it can't be used with external drives, which does makes sense, though for me in this case, annoying nonetheless.
I put the one as a time machine backup, and used the other to reorganize my content. The time machine drive started being a bit flaky, and has now died altogether.
As per usual, I go shopping for another one on Amazon, and I always look at reviews. Sometimes the negative reviews can be very helpful in discerning products that do have serious legitimate issues. For external hard drives though, they are mostly garbage.
Guess what folks, it's an external hard drive. Hard disks at the best of times have a pretty high DOA rate. The only reason the one in your computer has a tendency to last longer is that manufacturers typically put a computer through a "burn-in" cycle. They stress the system for continuous long periods to weed out components that are likely to fail.
Your small cheap external drive has not been put through this kind of testing. Not only that, it's external, in a small case, with little protection over a flaky interface like USB instead of a nice stable internal SATA interface.
if you put ten years of work on an external drive with no additional backup, there is a pretty good chance you'll lose the lot, and then whining that it was the fault of the hard drive product is pretty naïve.
It does seem like there are some devices that do have a burn in period, but typically they are considerably more expensive. It looks like Apples's time capsule and I speculate the G-Drive products fall into that category. The problem is rather obvious, they are considerably more expensive than their counterparts.
At this point, I think I'm going to try and use two drives, but in rotation. Use one for a month, then switch over, then after another month, switch to the other. At least, the oldest data version will never be more than 30 days adrift, better than just losing the damn lot.
My primary drive is 1TB and I have an external content drive that clocks in around 2TB. Neither is 100% full, and I've been okay with a 3TB backup drive operating through Time Machine.
I purchased a Seagate unit about six months back, and it seemed to be working Okay until I had a system failure, whereupon it quit on me. I was able to get data off it, though only by using some pretty low level access. I decided to replace it with a pair of Western
Digital drives, and put them in a RAID mirror. Well, it was a nice idea, and whilst OS X does have a software Raid feature, it can't be used with external drives, which does makes sense, though for me in this case, annoying nonetheless.
I put the one as a time machine backup, and used the other to reorganize my content. The time machine drive started being a bit flaky, and has now died altogether.
As per usual, I go shopping for another one on Amazon, and I always look at reviews. Sometimes the negative reviews can be very helpful in discerning products that do have serious legitimate issues. For external hard drives though, they are mostly garbage.
Guess what folks, it's an external hard drive. Hard disks at the best of times have a pretty high DOA rate. The only reason the one in your computer has a tendency to last longer is that manufacturers typically put a computer through a "burn-in" cycle. They stress the system for continuous long periods to weed out components that are likely to fail.
Your small cheap external drive has not been put through this kind of testing. Not only that, it's external, in a small case, with little protection over a flaky interface like USB instead of a nice stable internal SATA interface.
if you put ten years of work on an external drive with no additional backup, there is a pretty good chance you'll lose the lot, and then whining that it was the fault of the hard drive product is pretty naïve.
It does seem like there are some devices that do have a burn in period, but typically they are considerably more expensive. It looks like Apples's time capsule and I speculate the G-Drive products fall into that category. The problem is rather obvious, they are considerably more expensive than their counterparts.
At this point, I think I'm going to try and use two drives, but in rotation. Use one for a month, then switch over, then after another month, switch to the other. At least, the oldest data version will never be more than 30 days adrift, better than just losing the damn lot.
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