Question: How to Deal with an Upload Bottleneck with ADSL?

From Needpix.com
Used under Creative Commons Zero - CC0

Okay my geek audience out there, I have a classic bottleneck problem which I need some feedback on.

Here are the gruesome details:

• I have a network storage device with about 1 TB of information which is due to have its drives replaced.
• I have 2 TB of storage on Google Drive.
• My home Internet connection is an ADSL (I bet some of you can already see where the problem is going to emerge) with 25 Mb upstream and 75 Mb downstream.

Many of the files and folders I need to upload are large in the multiples of gigabytes range, therefore some take hours.

The primary problem:

Regardless of how I try to upload the files, the upstream saturates at full speed, which brings my whole connection down because it is asynchronous. The solution of course is to limit the upload speed by either bandwidth or QoS settings, neither of which my router has. Tried to use the Google Chrome browser Developer Console (Control + Shift +i) to limit the bandwidth, but this proved to be unreliable. The console has a tendency to just shut down after a few hours.

The secondary problem:

Found out that Google Drive has a problem with certain file extensions. They upload correctly but when you tried to download the folder they are contained in instead of Google Drive downloading them as a single zip file a downloads a zip file all rights but then also downloads files with presumably random extensions. Very strange behaviour. My solution, I thought would be to use WinZip 24 Pro edition to put everything in an archive and then upload it. But WinZip appears to have no settings for limiting the upload speed and so again my network saturates.

I have emailed WinZip technical support but they don't seem to grasp situation. I just get form letters in response asking for more information. I think I may know more about networking than they do. And that's not much!

Thought I had the answer the other night when I found some freeware called "TMeter" along with his site completely explaining how to properly set it up to limit your upload speed on a per application basis. But… WinZip apparently launches another process to do the actual uploading and tracking that down is proving to be quite the frustration.

So if anyone out there has any ideas on how to limit one's upload speed so as to not saturate an asynchronous connection please let me know!

I find it very surprising that WinZip with all their current focus on cloud storage has not addressed the situation and surely since most home Internet accounts are also asynchronous (meaning that if you overload the upload side, you also kill your download. Which effectively knocks you off the Internet.) It would vastly improve the program. All you would need is a setting that would allow you to indicate the maximum upload speed you wanted to use. Thereby saving your connection from disaster.

By the way every time my connection fails due to the situation I have to start all over again since I don't know exactly where the upload aborted.

I have spent many days and gigabytes of traffic trying to solve this problem. I know Google Drive has some desktop software which does have the appropriate settings, but it only allows you to upload pictures and well-known file formats. Since I'm trying to backup an entire hard drive containing ISOs archives in a wide variety of other things that solution did me no good.

Take care Patrick and any help would be greatly appreciated or even a guess.

Internet School

Vladsinger the copyright holder of this work, release this work
into the Public domain. This applies worldwide

Because of a recent break-in in our building, I am putting together a course for my fellow tenant's on how to use the services available online rather than getting documentation and cheques through the physical mail. Part of this course will cover "Internet safety"

My rough thoughts are being put in the following article so that you the readership can make comments and therefore influence the results. The Internet is incredibly dynamic and so should be the ways of accomplishing various tasks.

My first thought is, and will use Google as an example, when a person first sits down in front of a monitor displaying Google, what thoughts and relationships are they forming? Are they approaching it like I would, being very technically savvy and pondering which search terms to use, or are they looking at it from the perspective of a table of contents in a printed book? The answers to these questions greatly changes how the information should be presented to the various people in the course. I have a mandate in that the course cannot be excessively long or detailed but rather (hopefully) a bulleted concise list of things that can be remembered and comprehended quickly. Just how the heck am I going to put the Internet in a bottle?! And of course it must be interesting in order to be remembered.

The scenario is this:

• Adult audience
• Most are casual Internet users.
• Familiar with Facebook to some degree.

I'm going out on a limb, (this is my own personal opinion which may be terribly wrong) but I would say there is a tendency among most people to implicitly believe whatever they read in the search results.- EEEK!

So stay tuned… I will be updating this hopefully every day. Tuesdays and Thursdays are rather difficult as I have other things to do. But feel free to share any Internet learning experience in the comments.

To get the discussion going...

Questions to ask people:

• What do you use the Internet for?
• What do you find most frustrating about the Internet?
• What would you like to learn (be specific)?

"Thinking" Is Not "What One Thinks"

The Thinker in The Gates of Hell
by Auguste Rodin..  Used under CC 2.0.License.
Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbéra.

Over and over again, I find myself wondering if the human species really is capable of independent thought, or is it just that we create the illusion for ourselves, when in reality we are rearranging pre-existing information and calling it something new?

This is definitely not the case for researchers on the cutting edge of technology, one needs only look at the astounding achievements in the various fields over the last few years. What was once science-fiction, is not only fact but often we have gone beyond it. (I always find myself giggling when I look back at the original Star Trek series on TV with the character "Uhura", played by Nichelle Nichols, with the large communicator earpiece.)

But for the most part in our day-to-day lives do we really think independent thoughts? Are we really considering what we are hearing and seeing before we make a judgement? I think the answer is "No". We hear snippets of information all throughout the day and connect them together to create a temporary narrative which usually fits our preconceptions and is comfortable in some way, then we move on to the next item or distraction. But there is no real consideration. Even writing this short little article, there have been several interruptions of various sorts and side ventures occurring within a mere three paragraphs.

Nichelle Nichols as "Nyota Uhura".
This work, identified by PublicDomainFiles.com,
is free of known copyright restrictions.

The photo of Uhura with her earpiece turned into a quest when finding a photo which was copyright cleared, at least for editorial purposes. While I'm confident that this article meets all the appropriate requirements, to be absolutely certain probably would've taken hours of research plus some legal advice. So I did what most people do now days I skimmed the surface of knowledge, but at least I thought about the issue. My mental processes were engaged. Which is probably closer to independent thought that a lot of people get in their busy daily routines.

I think what concerns me most is that over time the human species may actually lose some of our cognitive thinking processes. It would be the old story: "If you don't use it, you lose it." And the voices taught me one thing it is that such things can happen quickly. The brain will reorganize rapidly to suit whatever environment it is in. Many years ago, I was in a body cast for six weeks. When it was taken off, my brain had forgotten how to move my legs. It was a remarkable experience, because of course you don't command your legs to move, they just do when you want them to. There is no internal language in this desire to move, at least not on a conscious level. Not only could my brain remember how to move my legs, I couldn't even tell you what I forgot. I just knew my legs weren't responding to my desires. Then an orderly moved my legs a few times, and in the space of a few minutes I reconnected and was back to normal.-But I still couldn't tell you what I relearned. Clearly learning and thinking happen on a much deeper level than we are normally conscious of. It was a remarkable experience. And I definitely understood how easy it would be to lose these abilities and that I really didn't understand what thinking was-and, still don't.

This is one of those times where I wish I had a time machine and could go back a few hundred years or maybe even less to observe how people actually engaged in the thinking process. With less automation, and thereby more "hands-on effort" by the brain I have a feeling it would be discovered that peoples cognitive thinking level was higher. How many people reading this text today have actually solved an arithmetic question in their heads in the last week or two. Less than 50 years ago everyone had to do some basic math in their head every day, whether that was counting money or just assessing something else.

Are we beginning to lose the very ability to truly think something new because we are so busy getting distracted?  There is literally no time to sit down and ponder ideas or concepts. I have been going to a small little cappuccino place for about the last year and in all that time I have not seen anyone with a book or piece of paper or even a device focused on a single goal. What I do see is people with a tablet, laptop, or even several phones switching between screens and presumably tasks. Your mind needs time to form thoughts to truly embed them in one's conscious reality. Google and Alexa have replaced this for the most part.

When I found the photo of the "Thinker In the Gates of Hell" at the top of this post I tried to imagine what it would be like for one individual to go through all the stages of creating a tremendous sculpture. Even if he had a team of assistants it is truly a mind-boggling and awe-inspiring undertaking. Could anyone do this now in the 21st century without relying on the augmentation technology gives us?

"Thinking" is not so much "what one thinks" it is the process of" how one thinks", and I think the important point there is that it is a process we need all to exercise. Maybe that is why I enjoy complexity in mystery and problem solving. I like the messy stuff. I don't like to use Google for everything despite what I had to do to write this short little article regarding the copyright issues for Star Trek related photo.

😉 Now I have an urge to go out and find a debating team😀
Until Next Week, Take Care Patrick Clark

Caravan of the Books

Photo by Alexandre Boue
licensed under the Attribution-Share Alike 4.0

I was watching a program the other night "Caravan of the Books: Kenya's Mobile Camel Library" (click the updated link for one minute preview) and was struck by the fact that this is happening in the 21st century. It is a marvellous and hopeful program, but North America and the developed world are planets apart. I felt guilty when I thought about demanding rights for this item or that item in the modern world. My electric wheelchair is not only computer-controlled but reports back to the company twice a day with complete diagnostics and has a huge range of features, all aimed at one thing-making me feel comfortable.

In our modern world of multitasking and distracting ourselves the message in this show was clear-at least to me-"How about we raise up the rest of the world allowing them to have opportunities and access." That leads into the question of what sort of things make societies separate. Is it just human nature to be tribal and unique at any cost? And when we arrive at an answer is the purpose of the "answer" just to make the affluent feel better?

I will expand on this in the coming weeks as more thoughts occur to me. My first is yet another question, "now that we know the past is not as simple or romantic as we'd hoped how do I do we change our present behaviours so that cultures can benefit from advancements while keeping their identity and uniqueness in any way they wish?

Patrick