Hacked Bitcoin Financial Site Had No Backups 331
An anonymous reader writes "A fortnight ago the Bitcoin financial website Bitcoinica was hacked and the hacker stole $87,000 worth of Bitcoins. At the time the owner promised that all users would have their Bitcoins and US dollars returned in full, but one of the site developers has just confirmed that they have no database backups and are having difficulty figuring out what everyone's account balance should actually be. A failure of epic proportions for a site holding such large amounts of money."
Honestly... (Score:2)
How are situations like this still happening?
Re: (Score:2)
it seems they might have had backups.
but those instances were deleted as well.
Re: (Score:2)
of course, that's standard procedure if you want to be sure that the backups remain in existence no matter what. a clone backup is still a backup though, just not a very robust one and even a robust backup can be deleted if the chain of command is broken(their email services were broken and it seems the service was operated mainly through online interaction between the people running it).
maybe they didn't want physical copies of the db around their houses, maybe they were afraid of the feds. just shows you
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I may be wrong, but is it not a standard procedure to rsync files to one backup location that is not directly accessible from the original data and then have a backup of the backup in an offsite location? The backup-backup should contain a pool of data that is no longer on the original drive but is kept for such purposes as this. I may be missing some piece of the puzzle here, but in the scenarios I have been involved in this was the setup and has greatly restricted the ability to lose ANY data. Of course we dealt with small businesses and may not have been subjected to such a large attack.
When you're running a fraud, the last thing you want is secured backups held by a third party. Most of the money is probably in Swiss or Cayman accounts held by Bitcoins owners and nobody can prove they are owed money.
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Funny)
And only steal 87k? Amateurs.
Not everybody can be Mark Zuckerburg.
Re: (Score:2)
I may be wrong, but is it not a standard procedure to rsync files to one backup location that is not directly accessible from the original data and then have a backup of the backup in an offsite location?
It may be a common procedure, but it's bad procedure that should not be standard. rsync doesn't handle files that are open well, and you risk ending up with a bad remote copy. Use a real backup procedure instead of rsync.
Re: (Score:2)
My current computer doesn't understand that concept of an "open file". Should I care to explain it through Linux?
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Funny)
How are situations like this still happening?
I think 17 year olds running online currency exchanges is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Re: (Score:2)
The amount of money that was stolen was only a fairly small fraction of the total money held by the exchange. The site designer at least had the good sense to keep most of the site's money in offline storage.
Of course, the lack of database backups make it really difficult to figure out who's money it is now. :-/
Re: (Score:3)
How are situations like this still happening?
Because some people who are in control of servers, databases, etc seem to think that a copy of their data is a backup even if it resides on the same hard drive or computer. Send a copy of it to a different drive ... attached to a different computer ... in a different location. The cost of being prepared for a data disaster is vigilance. The cost of not being prepared is ...
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
" The cost of not being prepared is ..."
That IT manager having to use the following words for the rest of his career.....
"Welcome to burger king, can I take your order?"
Sadly that will not happen. The IT manager will get promoted after he blames it on the IT guy that for years was asking why they dont have real backups.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, since he said it, the birth rate has gone up quite a bit...
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the attacker deleted your backup, you didn't actually have a backup.
Re:Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bingo!
It sounds like the people running the place are I.T. morons.
Rsync to second server, both servers then have offline backup that is cycled to a safe onsite AND offsite. THAT is a backup, not what most idiot business owners think a backup is.
I recently had this discussion with our CEO. "We dont need to spend $12,500 on a backup system...."
Me: so all our data is worth less than $12,500? if we lost ot all right now it would not matter at all to the business?
CEO: No, we would be devistated and out of business!
Me: so the whole business is only worth $12,500??!? Why are you keeping this from everyone that we are about to go under!
CEO: No! No! We are doing fine, well over $10million in sales last quarter...
Me: and you are unwilling to spend $12,500 to protect that money....... Really.....
CEO: go and order the backup server and tape Drive robot.
Re: (Score:2)
Why backup both servers? The reason for a backup server is to centralize everything and not letting an attacker get hold of your backup. You've done that, why also backup the original server?
If you are afraid of a single point of failure (hell, your requisites are more stringent than mine, I'd be ok with a monitoring system, but that is a business decision) add a second backup server.
Re:Honestly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Backups are things that aren't connected to your system –they protect you against rm -rf /*, viruses, attackers and all kind of other things. What you're referring to is redundancy, not backup.
Re: (Score:2)
Backups are things that aren't connected to your system –they protect you against rm -rf /*, viruses, attackers and all kind of other things. What you're referring to is redundancy, not backup.
Correct. And while it's absolutely deplorable that these folks were able to lose everything like that, I doubt that most people designing websites really think about the nitty gritty. They *should* have had rsync running on a schedule to an external server at a minimum, but unfortunately most people don't think of things like that until after they get burned by it. $87,000 is a margin of error in most banking circles, but it's still an expensive lesson to learn for the little guy.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why it should be set up for snapshots. However, that doesn't help much format database directly...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
synchronizing can very well be the first step in generating a backup.
first make sure everything is mirrored, then make a separate copy/snapshot. rsync can be decent at conserving bandwidth if only a few items have changed in a large repository.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
rdiff may be a better tool now, but it wasn't available when i had written some of my backup scripts, and i think still isn't quite as widely known as rsync
Re: (Score:2)
i have written rsync scripts before that would automatically abort if a threshold was hit for either number of files deleted or total mb deleted.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Thus the words "at a minimum".
If your scripts are set up correctly, though, you can have it store a timestamped snapshot rather than a single directory repository... when the files disappear, just go back to the last snapshot date where they're still there.
No problem (Score:3, Funny)
Just check out the WayBack machine. Use the same security hole the hackers used, and just read off everyone's bank balance. Sorted!
Where's the professional paranoia? (Score:2)
I've actually been relatively open-minded about Bitcoin in general, but this really does make them look like they're trying to cut everyone off and make off with the money. I mean, the combination of risk and technical know-how here really ought to result in a certain standard of paranoia.
Re: (Score:2)
I've actually been relatively open-minded about Bitcoin in general, but this really does make them look like they're trying to cut everyone off and make off with the money
No surprises there. Bitcoin was one trading at like $0.10, and the people who joined the scam back then made lots and lots of (real) money. People have been calling Bitcoin a scam for years at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
I've actually been relatively open-minded about Euros in general, but this bank robbery really does make the EU currency system look like they're trying to cut everyone off and make off with the money. I mean, the combination of risk and technical know-how here really ought to result in a certain standard of paranoia.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, Bitcoinica is not Bitcoin. It is a broker of Bitcoin futures contracts. And one that is unaudited, poorly-backed, unregulated, and run by a 17 year old Singaporean student.
So, those who were paying any attention at all know that using Bitcoinica was always a highly risky proposition. Making such a thing work flawlessly was never guaranteed to even be possible, let alone without bumps along the way, even though Zhou Tong did a relatively stellar job in my opinion, all things considered.
But l
Re: (Score:2)
I've met the VC (actually angel investor) in question. He's a really good and honest guy. He's not a shark.
This is due to two problems. First, the changeover to new management had not been completed yet, and when one of their systems was hacked it gave an opening to hack the trading site itself. This was a really serious failure, but also understandable since they hadn't finished auditing things to figure out how to secure them.
The second problem is that Bitoinica was hacked together quickly by a very talen
Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Meanwhile, the EUR is imploding due to abject irresponsibility on the part of its government backers, banks, and investors, and the USD is probably not far behind. I wonder how long off until we see wheelbarrows full of euros and dollars being used to feed woodstoves rather than as currency. The growing sovereign debt crises and $700T (yes, that's a "T") derivatives market going tits-up are going to make BTC's problems look like a joke.
Yet I see comment after comment of how irresponsible and amateurish BTC is, and how we should only trust regulated, state-backed currencies. Yeah.
Re: (Score:2)
I wonder how long off until we see wheelbarrows full of euros and dollars being used to feed woodstoves rather than as currency.
Actually, it would be a good idea to burn the cash regardless of financial collapse. [nationalgeographic.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Yet I see comment after comment of how irresponsible and amateurish BTC is, and how we should only trust regulated, state-backed currencies. Yeah.
And what's amazing is that after this debacle, nobody will ever think to insist that their next Bitcoin site show that they have provable backups.
Oh, wait, they actually will, probably insisting that somebody reputable verify that, and such a market regulation only cost $87,000, barely the benefited cost of a secretary for some big government agency.
Re: (Score:3)
The growing sovereign debt crises
The US can always pay its debts because it is economically sovereign. It prints its own currency, its debts are denominated in its own currency and its currency floats against other currencies. Now, can the US politicians actually be trusted to honor the debts. That isn't as clear. And that is why S&P gives JPY an AAA rating while USD doesn't get one. A pure political (not debt) crisis based on fundamentalists in the government.
The Euro-zone, now that is a different matter. There is some real sovereign
Re:Irony (Score:4, Funny)
Probably more of the opposite, deflation.The growing sovereign debt crises
Shit, they got to him. Thank goodness he managed to click submit.
Re: (Score:3)
It hasn't happened to BitCoin, it's happened to a specific bank dealing with BitCoins.
It's no different from a traditional bank being hacked or robbed. It's not the BitCoin currency itself which has been hacked, it's just a database keeping track of how many BitCoins people have deposited into the bank.
a lot of money? (Score:2)
$87k is two day's work for a CEO (or sports star) earning $10 million/year . Not really very much money, at least as far as the 1%-ers are concerned. And we all know they're the only ones who matter.
Do I really need a here?
Re: (Score:2)
teach me not to preview. that was supposed to read "do I really need a "" here?"
Re: (Score:2)
ok, I give up -- how do I post a "less than" symbol in a plain text post?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
<
Re: (Score:2)
&-l-t-; (no hyphens obviously)
If it works, less than shows here: <
This story is completely overblown (Score:5, Insightful)
This story about the woes of Bitcoinica is grossly overblown. The amount of money is comparatively very small, and the Bitcoin network itself is nothing to do with this theft and is sound.
To put some perspective on the Bitcoinica incidents, in 2008, the estimated UK bank fraud level was £52.5 million; that is 990.28441 times the amount of this Bitcoin theft:
http://www.themoneystop.co.uk/042009/online-banking-fraud-is-on-the-rise-in-the-uk.html [themoneystop.co.uk]
There are people on many sides who want Bitcoin to fail, and who will do anything to stop it from growing. The banks hate it, because it will disintermediate and replace their business. The Statists dont like it because it will defund their socialist dreams. The gold bugs loathe it because it is not gold. Keynesian journalists bristle at the fact that the money supply in Bitcoin is limited, and dream of seeing it destroyed.
None of these people will matter in the end, and they do not understand Bitcoin.
Bitcoin will continue to grow, and events like this will winnow out the weak services and strengthen the existing ones. Each theft, disaster and problem are iterations that add to the unpublished "how to run a safe Bitcoin service" manual. Bitcoin and the services that will grow up around it cannot be stopped, just like Bittorrent cannot be stopped, and the latter is responsible for 53.3% of upstream traffic:
http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-still-dominates-global-internet-traffic-101026/ [torrentfreak.com]
It doesn't take much to see how important Bitcoin is going to become once the core public facing interfaces are solidified, refined and reliable. Bitcoinica is not Bitcoin, and neither are any of the services that are built on it. Bitcoin is a protocol. Events like this are nothing more than a bump in the road, and a vanishingly small one at that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This story is completely overblown (Score:4, Insightful)
The banks hate it, because it will disintermediate and replace their business.
No. It will not... ever. Your mistake is in assuming that what people will value, and how they will treat the things they value, is always based on reason. If history teaches us anything, it is that people are often far from reasonable. So no matter how much bitcoin has going for it, when viewed dispassionately, it is not shiny and tangible. The fact that the shiny things, and more importantly, the things that people build and do for each other are far more tangible, and that those things would steadily become worth fewer bitcoins per unit rather than more, is guaranteed to keep it nothing more than another geek fad.
Re:This story is completely overblown (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think Bitcoin will work in the long run. The main reason is that it's designed to be limited to a fixed amount. This leads to three problems:
1) And financial transaction that requires interest is a problem. Anything from a business loan to a mortgage is basically impossible in a fixed money supply.
2) Assuming the economy grows, there would be deflation, which will mean people try to hoard their bitcoins instead of spending them. This in turn increases the deflation.
3) Related to the first two points: One person can over time become the owner of all bitcoins if this person has a sizeable initial stack of bitcoins, and lends them out at interest, and keeps spending well below the gained interest, you end up gaining a larger and larger share of the total bitcoin supply.
These effects feed into each other, enforcing the effects and if kept unchecked will lead to a situation where a few players own the vast majority of the bitcoin supply. The pool of bitcoins not in their hands will dwindle as more and more of it is paid as interest to the large lenders, given continuous deflation and ultimately concludes in a credit crunch of epic proportions.
A successful bitcoin is a setup for a major economic disaster, a failed bitcoin can be ignored. I choose the second option because I think the first one would create problems much bigger than the economy has now.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately for your logic, bitcoin keeps on ending up with more people using it. It's not a rocket growth curve to be sure. But it isn't negative either.
Epic? (Score:2)
No Backups?!?? (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't the amount, it's the sheer amateurishness of the operation and the subsequent loss of trust.
Banks, exchanges, and other monetary systems, including currencies themselves, can only function when there exists an implied trust that the system will continue to function, and do so reliably. A loss of that trust is what causes bank runs, hyperinflation, and economic collapses.
Bitcoin has destroyed that trust. They're toast.
Rookie mistake (Score:2)
Seriously, you are dealing with financials. How can you be so stupid? I guess that is what happens in a field where you throw away your most experienced people because they are too old and just don't "get it".
mp (Score:2)
My prediction?
The SEC will consider bitcoins as "unlicensed securities" and start prosecuting people for selling them.
Re: (Score:2)
EPIC FAIL from Bitonica
No kidding ... and backupica.com is available. Go figure.
Re:Let me be first to say... (Score:5, Interesting)
Regulation of currency has nothing to do with this. In fact shortly before it closed Bitcoinica was boasting that it had recently come under regulatory supervision. And do you think dollars and euros are immune from incompetence leading to massive losses? If so, where have you been in the last few years?
The underlying problem here is simple, and actually has little to do with Bitcoin itself. The problem is that Bitcoin has grown so extremely fast that almost anyone who sets up a unique financial service, as Bitcoinica and MtGox did, is immediately flooded with users and vast sums of money. These guys are then plunged into the pain of scaling up their operations from zero almost overnight .... setting up customer support, dealing with bugs and new features, figuring out the relevant regulations so they can start to comply with them and attempting to secure their operations.
It does not help that many of these operations started out being run by rank amateurs. MtGox was written in amateurish PHP and had to be almost completely rewritten from scratch by Mark Karpeles, who appears to be fairly competent. Their big security breach came when the previous owner (the amateur) got hacked, he had retained too much access to the business internals. Bitcoinica was, notoriously, set up by a Chinese 17 year old who was able to build a nice UI and working trading platform, but quickly realized he was in over his head with regards to building a rock solid secure operation.
Securing IT systems is hard and Bitcoin as it stands today doesn't do much to help you with it. It's worth noting here that if you just want to sell things for coins (the common merchant case) your server does not need to have the ability to spend the received money at all. You can use a split wallet (also called a "watching wallet") on the server, and then only a totally diffferent secure machine of your choosing can actually move the money. So the difficulty mostly affects companies that need to automatically receive and send large sums of money. The community knows how to make improvements - the protocol allows for money to require multiple signatures to move it, so a framework for having an independent second system that verifies/risk-analyses a transaction stream before signing it would be a good step forward. Using trusted computing platforms like Intel TXT + the TPM chip allows you to secure your wallet in such a way that root level compromise of the machine cannot be used to extract the keys. And the use of "cold storage" wallets is already commonplace. Etc, etc.
The Bitcoin world is going through a period of rapid evolution in which amateur wildcat operations prove demand and are then rapidly replaced by companies designed by highly paranoid people. If you are skilled at computer security and willing to do a lot of paperwork, there's golden opportunities for you right now.
Re:Let me be first to say... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
Regulations on financial transactions shouldn't allow semi-competent 17 year olds to handle large amounts of other peoples' money, for instance, or to design software for such.
So using Free software would be out of the question, because it might include code written by a minor? Or by somebody with a false identity, a codename such as "Satoshi"?
I agree on your main point about handling other people's money responsibly. But the designer of the software has nothing to do with this, you still have to choose the software responsibly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Bitcoins are not currently money. They're more like arcade tokens, really. No value outside the venues honoring them.
Currency, on the other hand...
Re:Let me be first to say... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Bitcoins are not currently money. They're more like arcade tokens, really. No value outside the venues honoring them.
Currency, on the other hand..."
Feel free to try and use North Korean currency in the United state or europe to buy something.
Currency has NO VALUE outside the venues honoring them.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
At least currently. But if BitCoins turn out to be more reliable over the next few decades than the Euro and the USD, people may change their perceptions of what makes a currency credible.
Traditional fiat currencies are victims to the whims of democratically elected politicians and political maneuvering. In Europe the Euro has lost a lot of credibility after Italy and Greece joined it under false pretenses (they lied about the state of their countries' economies).
Re:Let me be first to say... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense. Bitcoins are a currency.
Although, I imagine that your idea of currency is tied to the number of merchants that accept it, with some idea of critical mass. Hence, if / when 700 million people are engaging in various transactions using BitCoins, you will think of it as a currency.
Re: (Score:2)
The financial regulations that primarily apply to exchanges and trading platforms aren't what you think they are. As far as I'm aware, at least, there are no regulations that require "competence", perhaps because it's so company-specific and difficult to legislate. The regulations that DO apply are primarily about allowing governments to track money flows between identified parties for the purposes of crime fighting and who knows, maybe some general oppression as well ;)
It's nice to think that regulators ca
Re: (Score:2)
shortly before it closed Bitcoinica was boasting that it had recently come under regulatory supervision.
...and now their database and all the backups vanish? - I feel a conspiracy theory brewing.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it would be the equivalent of a comunity bank saying they lost everyone's information.
Re: (Score:2)
Precisely. It's not the BitCoin currency itself which has been hacked, only a bank that stored said currency. It's not different from hacking the electronic accounts in an ordinary bank. Except for the fact that this bank didn't have proper backups of people's account information.
Re: (Score:2)
In your scenario, yes, there will eventually become more secure garages. Some may eventually become extremely secure. But do you really want to bank out of someone's garage?
I trust this far more than I trust the legal framework surrounding our current banks. If they're big enough, they don't really have to comply with the law, just give the appearance of doing so. Most of our laws and regulations designed to reign in larger business actually work that way. They might accomplish something for a few years, but as soon as people stop paying really close attention the regulators start acting on the behalf of the industry they regulate instead of the people they're supposed to be s
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cash doesn't need backups.
Close. Cash is the equivalent of no backups. Having your money in a regulated, underwritten by government, bank is having your money well backed up. An unregulated industry like bitcoin (as illustrated in TFA) is the worst of both worlds.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Until the government decides to steal that money from you: "Freezing your assets" because they suspect you of some crime, "garnishing" or "levying" your bank account because you didn't "voluntarily" pay their taxes, and so on. And then of course, the government can just decide to print more money at will, stealing wealth from everyone, through inflation.
The risk of theft or loss with government-backed banks is the same; the thieves are just more organized. And if you consider inflation, the slow, persistent, and inexorable theft of your banked USDs is all but certain.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Funny)
Right on; say what you want, at least Bitcoins don't change in value.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's called inflation. I know it's confusing, since the talking heads on TV tell you that deflation is bad and that inflation is good. That's their job.
Just remember that when the money supply inflates due to money printing, your money is worth less.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ha! (Score:4)
Correct, monetary savings are not investments, if there is a reward, that is if the money is worth more just by sitting around, your system is broken. And as the unquoted part stated, that reward comes from everyone who is working to expand the economy, justify that part instead of spewing cheap rhetoric.
The argument I didn't even touch on? Keep on topic, that is on whether or deflation pumps wealth from those producing it to those who sit on their money in a fucking growing economy. Bringing up unrelated shit that actively runs counter to the argument presented is what's ridiculous.
If you believe that hyperinflation is happening right now and can't manage finances that might be correct. As it stands money is still worth almost all of its value a year later and there is a variety of stable options that will retain the value long term, is retaining enough for you? Some people need stupid excuses for spending but they are just that.
The world where you can afford to spend because everyone else is working their asses of to make your pile more valuable? Or do you just need an excuse that makes you feel better about spending. Money is part of a larger market dynamic, accept that and maybe you can feel better about the real world.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
When money is printed, and the velocity of money and the quantity of all available goods and services remains constant, your money is worth less. FTFY.
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not "all other things," it's growth of goods and services and velocity of money. And these things are never "held equal" in a real economy; Q consistently increases globally but is highly variable locally in time and space, depending on wether or not an economy is in recession, and V depends on a lot of factors, like confidence, inflation expectations, market depth, economic development...
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Insightful)
Cash (or "money") is not a store of value, it's a lubricant for exchange. A monetary system without inflation (small, predictable) encourages people to store wealth in "money", as opposed to investing it in productive uses. Monetary systems with a small amount of inflation will encourage investment of wealth to earn a return at least as good as the inflation being experienced. Which is why virtually every economy on the planet left the gold standard; the economies with "inflatable" currencies will outperform those without.
Re: (Score:2)
He or she is not a theorist. All of the things (s)he mentions actually happen. It's become increasingly common for banks to refuse to do business with someone because someone in power disagrees with them. And then it doesn't matter how many people want to vote with their dollars, there is no longer any way for those dollars to get to them.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, you're only backed up to the insurance limit. IF the government has the resources to back it.
Re: (Score:2)
Having your money in a regulated, underwritten by government, bank is having your money well backed up.
Um, no [silverunderground.com].
Even QIC-80 tapes are more robust.
Re:Ha! (Score:5, Informative)
Good luck getting any bank in America regulated if the Republicans all three branches.
Like they did in 2002 when the Sarbanesâ"Oxley Act was passed? You're delusional if you think Republicans don't love regulation. Look at their actions, not their words.
Seriously, look into starting a new bank as a startup (I have). It's not possible without massive capitalization and regulation. Upwards of $5M in legal fees alone.
Re: (Score:3)
Cash doesn't need backups.
If I keep my money in coins (a precursor to BitCoins) or in bills (aka foldin' money) and someone steals them I have no cash and I have no backups. If I keep it in a cash server (aka bank, savings and loan, or other financial institution) and they get robbed I do have a backup (even if management are the ones that steal the money or bankrupt the institution, but only up to $250k which is plenty to cover my accounts).
Re:Ha! (Score:4, Informative)
Scrooge Mcduck never worried about banks and he was loaded.
If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times. Scrooge McDuck is a better duck than I.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Scrooge Mcduck never worried about banks and he was loaded.
True, but he did have to contend with the Beagle Boys on a near-constant basis.
Re:Don't care. (Score:4, Funny)
I used to think that too. Soooo sick of Bitcoin articles. But now, every Bitcoin article is a new hilarious episode of idiocy, and it gives me my daily dose of schadenfreude, so I'm loving it.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I used to not understand how double spending was prevented in Bitcoin, but I finally got it - there's a cloud of P2P servers that keep a signature trail of every transaction everywhere... o.k., so, now I believe that double spending is prevented, but I'm having a very hard time wrapping my head around the idea that this could scale to handle any kind of transaction volume.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Retrieval of that free backup costs a whopping $25.
Think about that statement for a minute...
Re: (Score:2)
Backup is free. Retrieving said free backup is what costs you.
Which means... it's not free.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Retrieval of that free backup costs a whopping $25.
Think about that statement for a minute...
Backup is free. Retrieving said free backup is what costs you.
Which means... it's not free.
For what it's worth, I knew exactly what you were trying to get that when you said "think about that statement for a minute" the first time.
But you *do* get the backup for free, it's the restoration you pay for. I'm aware that you probably think this sounds like disingenuous pedantry, but the evidence that the "free" backup isn't valueless is that... you try getting your data back from a faulty hard drive *without* a backup and you'll be damn lucky to get some (or any) of it back for $25!
Re: (Score:3)
I think the restoration fee is because they're a business and want to earn money. They get customers by offering the backup for free, so they have to charge for something else.
And testing your backups once a year for a whopping $25 is still helluva lot better than not having any backups at all for $0.
Re:rsync (Score:4, Insightful)
Blacks are a net drain on society.
And you, sir, are an unacceptable drain on the Earth's supply of breathable air.
Re:rsync (Score:5, Insightful)
Your statement assumes the previous AC deserves rational argument in return. The problem is doing so gives too much importance to something that has actual negative intellectual value.
âoeTo argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.â - Thomas Paine
--
BMO
Re:this, ladies and gents... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Because we regulate traditional banks, they're never hacked or robbed.
Oh wait...