Cloud computing

[Zen Badger]

Quite simply, what do people think of it?

I just bought a Ipad4 for my FIFO job, and though I'm a bit suspicious of "outsourcing" my data storage, the way Apple tout Icloud makes it sound rather useful.

So has anyone used Icloud?

And what would the pro's and cons of trusting it be?

[Jackalope]

Its useful. As far as trust goes, I don't store anythng there that I wouldn't want published in the newspaper or that isn't backed up locally.

[Autumnlicious]

You're one of many.

What are the odds of being singled out, targeted?

Not high if you don't elicit interest.

The cloud is a safe enough place... If you can dwell in more obscure locales.

I like to use AWS S3 and EC2 to manage my own private cluster.

[pocaracas]

pros:
- Data/files available everywhere you have an internet connection
- Files stored in a relatively safe location, so you will never lose them.

cons:
- They have your files. They can know what's in them, if they're not encrypted.
- If you don't have them stored locally as well, you can't access them if you have no internet connection.
- Man-in-the-middle attack... if data transfer is not encrypted, your files may be intercepted during transfer.

[Angrboda]

My biggest concern is the sudden disappearance of a cloud host. I have all my web graphics hosted in the cloud, and if those providers went tits up, 90% of my posted links would be 404. I've got a new device (pogoplus) which I could root and turn into a web server, but I so lazy.

Maybe after the other upgrades I've been procrastinating on.


Hell, if I cared, I've got an old dual P3 server that's ready and waiting. All I'd need to do is turn it on and install some software. But, I don't.

[Autumnlicious]

Chances of a cloud hosting provider like AWS going down en mass?

Only if Amazon goes tits up, all their data centers are bombed and every tech around to fix them is dead...

Of course, if they ban you from the service because you're Wikileaks or something, well fuck...

[Jackalope]

Chances of a cloud hosting provider like AWS going down en mass?

Right. Pretty much everyone in the business of selling cloud storage services is reselling for AWS or another provider. With that being said, I'm still backing up what I've got stored in the cloud - I'm paranoid about data loss.

Only if Amazon goes tits up, all their data centers are bombed and every tech around to fix them is dead...

You could probably drop a nuke on Amazon's corporate headquarters and take out a fair number of their data centers and AWS would keep humming along.

Of course, if they ban you from the service because you're Wikileaks or something, well fuck...

Well, there's that. That's what backups are for. I keep a set local, and another set.... in the cloud, of course. Not to mention that anything really, really important to me is kept local on multiple PC's in two physical locations.

Did I mention I was paranoid about data loss?

[Angrboda]

Chances of a cloud hosting provider like AWS going down en mass?

Right. Pretty much everyone in the business of selling cloud storage services is reselling for AWS or another provider. With that being said, I'm still backing up what I've got stored in the cloud - I'm paranoid about data loss.

It doesn't matter who they are reselling for, they are still brokering the service, and in the absence of that service, the existence of your data "somewhere" is irrelevant. That my data still exists on some server somewhere is no comfort to me when all my links go dead. And there are zillions of cloud providers out there: dropbox, sugarsynch, the plethora of picture hosts from flickr to imageshack — if any of these companies go tits up, any links you've shared to that data become invalid. (Not to mention, anybody that's been in this business a long time knows that companies get sold, taken over, or abandoned, all the fucking time. If Amazon has to choose between retaining an unprofitable division (say AWS) and divesting it to concentrate on more profitable ventures, they're gone. [Google wave, anybody?] Hell, IBM's hard disk division was at the top of its game when they sold to Hitachi. And my ISP (one of them), was a world leader throughout the first 10-15 years of its career, and a major hub of all data traffic into and out of the state. First, a national bought them out, and then an international. The first was just pathetic; the second is so sleazy they leech off other providers by simply refusing to make peerage agreements — whether your pipe exists tomorrow or not is a big unknown. [And because they've taken over the ISP that was the major hub for data traffic in this part of the country, I suspect the reliability and robustness of all providers in the area is critically affected, as I'm sure they're still using the same infrastructure. At least, that's my suspicion.])

Shit, this is bringing up bad memories.


ETA:

I actually bought two pogoplus devices last month. One I can convert to a stand-alone web server. The other uses local storage in the form of flash or external drives, and makes their contents web accessible via their custom applications and servers. If I've got my photo collection hosted on there (not that I would), and they go under, that means the references to any of that content that I've shared are no longer accessible (and with probably 50,000-100,000 photos, if I exposed whole collections of photos to other content consumers, whole directories of content would just "virtually disappear" overnight).

[colossal123]

Exactly, people want to believe in Darwin's theory of evolution but when it comes to the reality of the belief everyone is steps back... because no 1 wants to be the 1 to say we should let children die in the hospital or blacks in Africa to finally die off and lets us stronger species survive... but they shouldn't bother you because according to Darwin, morals don't exist outside of cultures. especially to evolutionists...

[Phish]

http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computi...y-evil-409

http://www.techtangerine.com/2009/06/02/...-bad-idea/

There are many articles on the net that proves that cloud computing is an bad idea,you should try to avoid them.