Cloud?

[blank]

Cloud: The word has just been uttered in the Acronis thread. I wonder what
others think? I'll kick off with my opinion.

Would you trust your data and your programs with another unknown person? Who
can say with certainty that it won't be snooped into, misused or modified
(subtly or otherwise) or that you will suddenly have to pay any chosen
amount (by that body) to get back your own information? And who can say
that they trust *any* goverment in the World to act at all times with
honesty and integrity or that any government in the World can never be
accused of extreme self-serving activity or suppressing information abouts
its wrong-doings (or anything else that happens to embarrass it) or of
putting pressure on private companies to do its bidding.

Sure, by using the Cloud you transfer the need for processing power and for
updating software. But with the cost of processing power ludicrously low who
cares if in the end you are going to pay more.

Over to you. I have been lurking here for a while (and occasionally posting)
I am struck by the lack of foul language and nastiness, and the standard of
reasonable debate.

Cheers

 

[Brian Matthews]

Cloud: The word has just been uttered in the Acronis thread. I wonder what
others think? I'll kick off with my opinion.

Would you trust your data and your programs with another unknown person? Who
can say with certainty that it won't be snooped into, misused or modified
(subtly or otherwise) or that you will suddenly have to pay any chosen
amount (by that body) to get back your own information? And who can say
that they trust *any* goverment in the World to act at all times with
honesty and integrity or that any government in the World can never be
accused of extreme self-serving activity or suppressing information abouts
its wrong-doings (or anything else that happens to embarrass it) or of
putting pressure on private companies to do its bidding.

Sure, by using the Cloud you transfer the need for processing power and for
updating software. But with the cost of processing power ludicrously low who
cares if in the end you are going to pay more.

Over to you. I have been lurking here for a while (and occasionally posting)
I am struck by the lack of foul language and nastiness, and the standard of
reasonable debate.

Cheers

Well, as time goes by, the sites that rip people off will be exposed.
As well as the reliable ones. Me? I would wait before trusting some
such service with critical files. Maybe stuff I want to back up that
are either not too important to me or that I already have backed up.
At least, until the reviews are in. : )

And Cloud isn't new or exclusive to Acronis. I got a free storage
account when I bought my Asus netbook a couple of years ago.

 

[Char Jackson]

Would you trust your data and your programs with another unknown person?

Person? Perhaps not, but a business operating in that capacity, yes. I
have no need myself, but I've set up quite a few customers with online
backup and they seem to like it.

Who
can say with certainty that it won't be snooped into, misused or modified
(subtly or otherwise) or that you will suddenly have to pay any chosen
amount (by that body) to get back your own information?

If you're worried about it, just don't do it.

And who can say
that they trust *any* goverment in the World to act at all times with
honesty and integrity or that any government in the World can never be
accused of extreme self-serving activity or suppressing information abouts
its wrong-doings (or anything else that happens to embarrass it) or of
putting pressure on private companies to do its bidding.

This isn't a government conspiracy newsgroup.

 

[Allen Drake]

Well, as time goes by, the sites that rip people off will be exposed.
As well as the reliable ones. Me? I would wait before trusting some
such service with critical files. Maybe stuff I want to back up that
are either not too important to me or that I already have backed up.
At least, until the reviews are in. : )

And Cloud isn't new or exclusive to Acronis. I got a free storage
account when I bought my Asus netbook a couple of years ago.

For that matter how many people have actually read the disclaimer
offered when installing MS operating systems and banks when they admit
they will be sharing your personal data with third parties like credit
card people and others. Then there is the Patriot act well after the
fact. Not to mention wire tapping by the free USA none the least.

 

[Big Steel]

On 12/31/2011 2:57 PM, blank wrote:

Don't kid yourself because companies are out there using cloud technology.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_azure>
<http://www.top10dedicatedhosting.com/en/?p=1184>

<http://www.talkincloud.com/how-a-media-company-cashed-in-on-windows-azure/>

<http://www.onwindows.com/Articles/Chicago-Tribune-embraces-Azure/5244/Default.aspx>

http://aws.amazon.com/web-hosting/

<http://gcn.com/articles/2009/05/18/web-apps-cloud-computing.aspx>

 

[Allen Drake]

Person? Perhaps not, but a business operating in that capacity, yes. I
have no need myself, but I've set up quite a few customers with online
backup and they seem to like it.


If you're worried about it, just don't do it.


This isn't a government conspiracy newsgroup.

Danger will Robinson.

 

[Stan Brown]

Cloud: The word has just been uttered in the Acronis thread. I wonder what
others think? I'll kick off with my opinion.

Would you trust your data and your programs with another unknown person?

Emphatically no. First, you never know if they'll still be around,
or if they'll have a server crash and lose all the data they promised
to keep. Second, you never know if they'll be hacked, and your
backed-up financial records stolen, decrypted, and used for identity
theft.

It's important to store your backups in a different physical location
from the original computer, in case of fire. But for most of us that
is better doe on disk at a friend's house or in our own desk at work.
(Obviously that assumed the backups are passworded, but why would you
make them any other way?)

 

[Jeff Layman]

Cloud: The word has just been uttered in the Acronis thread. I wonder what
others think? I'll kick off with my opinion.

Would you trust your data and your programs with another unknown person? Who
can say with certainty that it won't be snooped into, misused or modified
(subtly or otherwise) or that you will suddenly have to pay any chosen
amount (by that body) to get back your own information? And who can say
that they trust *any* goverment in the World to act at all times with
honesty and integrity or that any government in the World can never be
accused of extreme self-serving activity or suppressing information abouts
its wrong-doings (or anything else that happens to embarrass it) or of
putting pressure on private companies to do its bidding.

Sure, by using the Cloud you transfer the need for processing power and for
updating software. But with the cost of processing power ludicrously low who
cares if in the end you are going to pay more.

Over to you. I have been lurking here for a while (and occasionally posting)
I am struck by the lack of foul language and nastiness, and the standard of
reasonable debate.

Well, mass storage is incredibly cheap these days - many terabytes for
not many $. How many terabytes do you need?

If you want secure off-site storage, you could arrange that yourself
without resorting to The Cloud. And while we are on security, what's
wrong with encrypting your data before you send it for storage (wherever
that is)?

 

[Char Jackson]

Well, mass storage is incredibly cheap these days - many terabytes for
not many $. How many terabytes do you need?

Or at least it was incredibly cheap until the factories had to close
to accommodate the floods...

 

[blank]

Well, as time goes by, the sites that rip people off will be exposed.
As well as the reliable ones. Me? I would wait before trusting some
such service with critical files. Maybe stuff I want to back up that
are either not too important to me or that I already have backed up.
At least, until the reviews are in. : )

And Cloud isn't new or exclusive to Acronis. I got a free storage
account when I bought my Asus netbook a couple of years ago.

I wasn't thinking of Acronis.

 

[blank]

Person? Perhaps not, but a business operating in that capacity, yes. I
have no need myself, but I've set up quite a few customers with online
backup and they seem to like it.


If you're worried about it, just don't do it.

*I don't. But will we always have the choice?

This isn't a government conspiracy newsgroup.

* But it isn't a censored one either, and the level of debate is civilised
and this possibility important to us programmers and users

 

[blank]

On 12/31/2011 2:57 PM, blank wrote:

*I *didn't* write this... (you oversnipped)

 

[Stan Brown]

Or at least it was incredibly cheap until the factories had to close
to accommodate the floods...

It's still incredibly cheap by historical standards.

$99 for a 1 TB external drive looks bad compared to $99 for a 2 TB
external drive, but compare it to $999 for a 10 MB (yes, MB not GB)
internal drive, which is what I paid in 1984.

$999/10 MB = $99.90 per MB
$99/1 TB = just under 1/100 cent per MB

 

[Paul]

It's still incredibly cheap by historical standards.

$99 for a 1 TB external drive looks bad compared to $99 for a 2 TB
external drive, but compare it to $999 for a 10 MB (yes, MB not GB)
internal drive, which is what I paid in 1984.

$999/10 MB = $99.90 per MB
$99/1 TB = just under 1/100 cent per MB

Yes, but average file sizes back then, were a lot smaller.

I was able to store two years worth of work, on a 10MB drive.

We measured average data file size back then, and it was around 2KB or so.

There just wasn't any multimedia content to bloat the drive with.

Paul

 

[blank]

It's still incredibly cheap by historical standards.

$99 for a 1 TB external drive looks bad compared to $99 for a 2 TB
external drive, but compare it to $999 for a 10 MB (yes, MB not GB)
internal drive, which is what I paid in 1984.

$999/10 MB = $99.90 per MB
$99/1 TB = just under 1/100 cent per MB

It was A$9,999 for 8 Megs when I was first into programming

 

[Steve Hayes]

Yes, but average file sizes back then, were a lot smaller.

I was able to store two years worth of work, on a 10MB drive.

We measured average data file size back then, and it was around 2KB or so.

There just wasn't any multimedia content to bloat the drive with.

Also, over 20 years or so one accumulates a lot more data.

In 1985 I began to transcribe part of my handwritten diary, for 1969, because
I wanted to be able to search of things I had noted that my grandmother said.
I was then using an Osborne computer running CP/M, with two 185k floppies, and
transcribed it using Wordstar.

My got my first hard drive in 1987, and it was was 20 Mb, which seemed
enormous at the time. I converted my diary transcriptions to XyWrite.

In 1991 I got askSam, a freeform database, and began converting my diary
entries to that, and keeping my diary in that program. I used a file for each
year, and they ranged in size from about 125k to 450k.

In 2001 I began converting them all to Inmagic, and keeping them in one file.
The Ascii backup file is now over 20 Mb, bigger than my first hard drive, and
that's without any multimedia at all.

Programs have grown too.

Wordstar was about 60k, XyWrite was about 125k. MS Word for Windows was about
15 Mb, in the 1990s, though it still doesn't seem to be able to do some of the
things that XyWrite could do -- like microjustification.

So it's not just multimedia, it's program bloat and data accumulation that
make us need more and more storage as well.

 

[Roy Smith]

It's still incredibly cheap by historical standards.

$99 for a 1 TB external drive looks bad compared to $99 for a 2 TB
external drive, but compare it to $999 for a 10 MB (yes, MB not GB)
internal drive, which is what I paid in 1984.

$999/10 MB = $99.90 per MB
$99/1 TB = just under 1/100 cent per MB

It's probably even a bigger gap than that if you take into consideration
the value of a dollar then as compared to now.... I remember my first
hard drive a whopping 52 MB Seagate SCSI drive for my Amiga 500. Forget
the price I paid for it right off hand, but i do know that it was more
than the $75 I paid for a 1 TB drive at Best Buy a few months ago.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 9.0.1
Sunday, January 01, 2012 9:49:31 PM

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Jeff Layman

If you want secure off-site storage, you could arrange that yourself
without resorting to The Cloud. And while we are on security, what's
wrong with encrypting your data before you send it for storage
(wherever that is)?

Depends how paranoid you are, and how much you (mis)trust your storage
operator. If you do mistrust them, then you presumably assume they are
at least scanning everything you store. If you assume _that_, then the
fact that you _have_ encrypted something (including if it's everything)
will _draw attention_ to it as being something worth stealing.

 

[James Silverton]

In message <[email protected]>, Jeff Layman

Depends how paranoid you are, and how much you (mis)trust your storage
operator. If you do mistrust them, then you presumably assume they are
at least scanning everything you store. If you assume _that_, then the
fact that you _have_ encrypted something (including if it's everything)
will _draw attention_ to it as being something worth stealing.

I wonder what will happen if the cloud system closes down or goes
bankrupt? When I worked for the US government, we were encouraged to put
older documents into a commercial storage system which went bankrupt a
year or two later. We never got all of the documents back.

--


James Silverton, Potomac

I'm *not* (e-mail address removed)