DailyDirt: Will This Problem Ever Go Away?
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
A common complaint for closed source software-as-a-service is that it can just go away almost any minute -- leaving users abandoned without any immediate backup solutions. There might be alternatives to switch to, but the alternatives are not exactly the same, and this is why people complained so much when [GeoCities, Google Reader, FormsCentral, etc.] shut down. Users get accustomed to certain features that may be unique. Some companies are better at handling service shutdowns than others, but in the end, it's still really annoying.- Apple acquired FoundationDB, and the support of its distributed database software will abruptly end. Users can still continue to use the software they've downloaded already, but there won't be much help if there's a problem. [url]
- Xeround suddenly shut down its database as a service business in 2013, giving paying customers just 2 weeks notice to migrate their data. At least Xeround's service was based on scaling MySQL, but no one likes to have to move large scale databases in just a couple of weeks. [url]
- A really easy-to-use database service called Dabble DB shut down after the team behind it was hired by Twitter. They gave users 60 days notice before shutting down, but nothing exactly like it seems to exist anymore. [url]
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Filed Under: database software, mysql, nosql, open source, saas, software
Companies: apple, dabbledb, foundationdb, twitter, xeround
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This is why
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Re: This is why
FOSS is a beautiful concept, but is neither a silver bullet, nor remotely related to the topic of the article which is abandoned services.
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Unfortunately, there's not an open source program for every need, or in some cases, the open source alternatives aren't as good as the proprietary programs. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of open source, free software, but sometimes the closed source, commercial programs are just better.
For example;
I wanted to edit the audio of a large video file to fix a bunch of dead spots by copying and pasting nearby data. Someone recommended Audacity so I tried it. Unfortunately it was slow and clunky. Each paste operation took several seconds during which time the program was unresponsive. Also, if I didn't make sure to select EXACTLY the same length of data to be replaced when pasting my patch, it would change the length of the track and throw it out of sync with the video. With hundreds of dead spots to fix and sometimes needing to experiment with each one to get a flawless (or as close to it as possible) patch, it was going to take me several days to do the whole thing.
When I asked for alternatives, someone recommended Cool Edit Pro. Compared to Audacity, it was fast and responsive. Pasting data was nearly instantaneous and it had a handy paste/replace option that would overwrite the existing data without changing the length of the track. I've heard that it has problems running under Windows 7 or higher though.
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Audacity is the only audio editor that I know that's free and available for Windows.
What program would you recommend, which can load large audio files (90-120 minutes), works with stereo files, lets you zoom into the waveform display, allows nearly instantaneous copying and pasting of data, and which has a paste with replace option, so that I don't have to worry about changing the length of the track?
I'm not being a smartass, I'd really like to know if there is such a program that's freeware and available for Windows?
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I know next to nothing about compiling software from source code. I've only done it a couple of times and in each instance, the authors provided step by step instructions of what you needed to run, what extras you needed to have installed, what kinds of changes you needed to make for different platforms etc.
I also know absolutely nothing about using Linux programs. I've used a live CD that runs a program to wipe the login passwords on a Windows machine, but that's about the extent of my Linux usage. When quitting one of those programs (I think it was a password cracker) I was dumped to a Linux desktop and I couldn't even figure out how to initiate a reboot.
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Then he finally got it and within a week, he was posting about had he had installed all his old programs in WINE because he couldn't find Linux equivalents that he was happy with.
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