Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations photobucket ransom

RC's process is the best for me. The ten steps don't seem like much once you have done it few times especially compared to the 5 to 10 minutes it took me to use photob#cket. Reducing the size is a bummer, but the photos are still very good and serve their purpose very well. The only real caveat that I can imagine is...I suspect it will use more "forum space", but what do I know?

Looks like PostImage.org is maybe going through some changes too...
many of these companies hosting enormous files of images for FREE are struggling.

PostImage.org changes

ps: the actual image site is plural "PostImages"
http://postimages.org/

Sounds like ad revenue isn't paying the bills.

I think maybe the change from desk/lap tops to cell phones is a lot of it also. This changes the way things work...and probably the number of users on these sites. Photobucket, shutterfly, and the like have all probably been hit by the cell phone boom. Now everyone has a cloud to store their stuff instead of a server somewhere. Not that I agree with the free or cheap to out of control price hike...lol but was just thinking.

probably true peach....images and the space needed to store them has literally exploded as the phone replaced cameras...it's gotta be 100,000 fold what it was just ten years ago.

speaking of that...i still love my laptop

i know many are using primarily their phone now

not me...

in the eve I still like sitting in my recliner with my laptop while watching cable tv

I know guys in my generation that have both, but still prefer their phone sitting on the sofa at home....of course kids prefer the phone overwhelmingly, but they live to text and instagram..etc.

Now, that made me smile.

Zep, I'm a laptop guy too...heck I still have a flip phone and I'm 38...lol.

My wife and kids all have galaxies and Iphones. I will probably bite the bullet but I'm like you, I love my laptop and love to really see the pics on my screen and be able to easily read a page without scrolling all around it. lol.

My flip phone gets service anywhere and has a battery life of nearly a week. I have dropped it from tops of 18 wheelers while working on engines and it has weld spatter spots all over it. You can't see most of the numbers on the buttons anymore, and YES you have to tap tap tap to get to a particular letter to text. lol. BUT it has NEVER let me down..its like that 2 or 300,000 mile truck with the original engine that you still drive because you would just like to see how long it will go!


Theo...just saw something interesting, soon, very soon your post count will 12345 lol. That will not happen again until 123456, don't think any of us will be around for that one.

HAHAHA Okay, I just saw what I posted...didn't even think about it when I typed it. We have free or cheap cloud (server) storage with our phones instead of a server owned by photobucket or shutterfly or the like that we used for our laptops. That made me smile after I finally read what I typed...like the cloud is an invisible server in the sky...lol.


Theo glad you got a laugh...I'm still laughing at myself.

LOL that was funny.... hehe

RC

I'm sure it's not quite this easy and I don't know how PondBoss hosts their stuff but......



Hard drive space is as cheap as it's ever been at this point. You can get a 3 TB hard drive for about 100 bucks. Lets break that down for a sec.

There are a 1,000 Megabytes in a Gigabyte.

There are 1,000 Gigabytes in 1 Terabyte.

There are a million Megabytes in a 1 Terabyte.

Now lets say we are only allowed a max of 2 megabytes for pic per post.


That 500,000 pics minimum with the 2 meg limit and most pics are smaller than that. Mine are usually around 1 meg or less.

With a 3 Terabyte hard drive your talking 1.5 million pics pondboss could host at the 2 meg limit for around 100 dollar hard drive.

I would be more than willing to donate to help the cause if they did such a thing and let us know how much it costs I am sure a lot of us would help out.

Just a thought!! But like I said in the I.T. world I am sure it may not be quite that easy for them....

RC

Count me in - a lot better than reposing 1000s of pics with no assurance that we don't get PhotoBSed again.

I think it would work. Well they would actually need 2 drives. One to store PB pics and one to back them up to in case of hard drive failure or someplace in the cloud to back them up to.

RC

Me too, but then you run into bandwidth problems and the number of people uploading/downloading/viewing from that one hard drive through that one connection to that one server. Might bog the system down.

Like you said though...that stuff is cheap and for the companies like photobucket, shutterfly, etc that probably has a room full of servers and bandwidth out the wazoo it shouldn't cost a person hundreds of dollars a year to keep their pics there and use that to post to forums and such.

And speaking of speed, you can now get solid state hard drives just like an ipod or what you have on your phone that have no moving parts and are so much faster than hard drives. Memory is cheap now a days. I do remember paying nearly 200 dollars for 4mb of ram in the 90's to boost my pentium 133mmx to 8, count them 8 whole megs or ram! I was blazing! lol

Yeah it may slow us down a little but that's one reason why they limit you on pic size. It would take a LOT of people downloading / adding a pic to pondboss at the same time with the size limit they have I don't think we would really notice it. And they could always set the backup to run at night when there is less activity. Once you had a whole backup it could then just run a incremental backup and get the new pics is hasn't gotten yet and it wouldn't take no time.

Anyhow that's up to the big dogs I suppose, but if they give us a number that would help them pay for it I would donate to it for sure!!

RC

I agree, I have not donated to the forum yet but will be doing so soon and subscribing. Awesome place to be!

I guess I'm a little funny on bandwidth because where we live and I work we have to either bounce off a cell phone for internet or use the verizon mifi. We do not have fiberoptic anywhere close so no DSL or high speed for us. I sometimes forget everyone else doesn't have that probelem.

You have a very good idea. I know there is alot of money goes into upkeep and the hosting of the forum...but as for the pic problem you make very good points and the pics would not be lost like they have been with this photobucket thing..with the back up in place of course.

RC...i am slow..so forgive me..but is this plan you propose mostly about Pond Boss not losing their history of images if a PhotoBucket type entity goes under? If that's the case I get it...but if not I am not sure I get it.

Because if it's about guys just being able to post pics then I can't see how anything could be safer/cheaper/easier than Pond Boss forum members just keeping their own images on their own computer...then using eZimba with 2-3 easy clicks to create a URL for the image and then post in the forum.

what says you?

Hey Zep,

First part yes you got it! Second part needs to be done so all them photos can be put back in the correct place if the hard drive died or if pondboss went down and that drive did not come back up in essence they need to be what we I.T. guys call mirroring that drive so they have an exact replica of it all if one goes down. Sure you can keep all your own photo's everyone can, but what if your pc died that has all your pics on it? Would they all be gone from the PB fourm then? I don't know anything about eZimba and how it works,but if it's just a link convertor and each one of us would store our own pics that could be a nightmare for PB. What if they went that route and 6 or 7 folks out here got a new laptop lost all their pics, got mad at the forum and got rid of all their links to their stuff.... Bottom line is for the PBF to have and keep there pictures of all the AWESOME stuff out here they need to really be able to host it themselves and back it up. Or your always gonna be subject to Picture Ransom somehow. The key here is 2 fold.

1. Keep 3rd party folks or anyone but PondBoss from having to intervene / host pics.

2. If PB backed it all up on their drives they could restore it much easier if something went wrong.

Now with that said that's a lot easier said then done in most cases and may take a bit of work on their part that's for sure. I mean right now if I use my 10 step procedure above where is that pic residing? I would guess out on the PBF somewhere?? I assume. They just need to make sure they have enough space and a good backup or a secondary server they are backing up to.

I'll use this for an example. I would hate to lose all of Bretski's pictures out here because of photobucket, or his pc crashed and burned or he got ticked off removed all his links to his pictures. Just saying as an example....

I'm in agreement with RC on that also. #1 and 2. I have alot of pics that are now lost. I posted using photobucket on computers that I no longer have and did not back up. They are now lost and have been pulled off of every forum that I have been on. I have been on LOTS of forums over the years and posted alot of pics. If you were to able to put them on the forums own drive they should always be there.

OK RC I understand better now. Thank You. I had the IT tech at work put most of the pics from my work desktop on to my laptop so there is some redundancy, but there is always a gap and most people may not do that...so yes it would be a bummer to lose like you say all the Brettski picture journey. I don't fully understand eZimba either. It has extensive editing, but I can't really figure out how to use most of it. And it looks like there is no way to "sign up" for eZimba or store any pics there. I really just use it to generate URL's for pics, but like you say what if eZimba is gone this weekend? All the eZimba URL linked forum pics would probably be gone too.

If I may offer a suggestion, now might be a good time to start a naming convention for our pics. Phones and digital cameras usually just use a number sequence to differentiate between pictures. While it works, it's doesn't tell you what the picture is if you searching your hard drive for it.

Mark, I'll use you for an example, but let's say you want to find a picture of your fire pit at your place. The camera may save the pic as IMG_3798.JPG, but a far better name would be ZepRanch_fire pit_10/10/2015.jpg. Where this helps is on searches. I'm not sure how Windows works anymore, but a search for ZepRanch would pull up all the pics that originated there, and make it much easier to find when needed. On fish pics I use "species_location_date.jpg".

RC, while I agree with your posts about hard drive costs, I'd be willing to bet the PB host is on a Unix/Linux system with raided drives of some kind. They're redundantly redundant, and failure is vary rare these days. Those drive arrays and controllers aren't cheap, and I wouldn't be surprised if some hosts still use scsi hard drives. In my previous life, we had 2 dedicated Stratus database servers that dimmed the lights when we fired them up. These were $15,000 a piece in 1990's dollars, but damn they were fast.

I absolutely agree with the backing up of data in a consistent manor. I'm on Macs now, so I use Time Machine for hourly backups, and then a disconnected usb eternal hard drive on Sunday mornings after all the security scans are done. No reason to pass any potential malware to the backup also.

I also wanted to applaud you guys efforts to find a suitable replacement for photobucket, but nothing in life is free, and anything we find is still potentially temporary. This whole debacle should open up an opportunity for other services to thrive, but they too have to make a profit of some kind. The hard part is for them to figure out how to do that in a market that was historically free.

The solution for third party hosting is to get your own domain. Use it for pictures and for email.

The solution for most forums that allow picture posting is to post the pics directly to the forum.

IMHO

Hey Fire if they are using Unix/Linux that that's awesome! It's good stuff! We don't use it anymore but hard to beat a good ole Unix box with AIX on it!! As long as you know all the commands that go with it!! LOL...

Yes there are a few options PB could go and maybe they are discussing it at this point lets hope so. Cause as of right now all these pics are gone... Bretski's, my cabin build, my dock build.... all the work involved putting up these pics so people could have the knowledge and now poof.... sad indeed.

RC

My photobucket pics are still here. Wonder what the deciding factor for cutoff was? Maybe heavy usage, or lots of storage? I think I have around 350 pics on Photobucket, but not sure.

sparky what's weird is my 2 signature images at the bottom several days ago got the "PhotoBucket Ransom" notice image so I switched them to eZimba, but my avatar has not been affected and it is a photobucket image that still shows.

Tony, I bet they're lowering their overhead for a sale.

Just curious, did everybody get all their pics back from pbucket? I downloaded all mine as a zip file last week, but I was wondering if that option was still there.

RC, I avoided the command line stuff like a plague. In my civil service world, if you knew something, it could become your responsibility. When we had meetings about the transition from mainframe to Windows. I was very happy to be the dumbest guy in the room. My brain was already full of insignificant stuff, and there was no reason to clutter it up with something useful.