The proposals I've seen about "the cloud" as it applies to music seem to indicate it's a way large
companies like Amazon and Apple are trying to get me to pay for music and then not own one atom of
what I've bought. They seem to want to stream lossy versions of what I buy "on demand" (except when
the internet is clogged, my ISP is down, their servers have been hacked or have otherwise failed,
etc). The user agreement excerpts I've seen in some articles seem to indicate I won't have any
ownership rights, just a right to ask this large company to provide a stream of digital bits to my
"device" (computer, cellphone, etc). Compared to buying and owning a CD or LP, this is not a
compelling proposition. You could say it's just a cloud of hot air!
A possible alternative theory is that "device" makers want to cut costs by not including any storage
memory. Again, no thanks. The stuff I get streamed from "the cloud" -- Pandora and internet radio --
is of an audio quality that reflects its price (free).
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard L. Hess" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 3:54 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Are your archive's off-site files safe?
> Hi, Randy,
>
> I'm not disagreeing with you that cloud computing is not a useful tool. I think in some message I
> said I was using it, too, but I do not trust it for long-term storage without backups. Each
> scenario of cloud use is different and I think my clouded contact information (part of GMail) is
> better backed up (with backups on both my wife's and my mail machines in Thunderbird with those
> being backed up into our NAS system (and ultimately the across-town copies) than my calendar
> information (only a small amount is captured locally on a regular basis, the rest is left to
> Google). There is also a deliberate backup of the GMail contact data directly every year at least
> as we polish the list for sending Christmas greetings.
>
> I just don't see keeping your ONLY copy of something in the cloud. Yes, I agree that cloud
> applications can facilitate and simplify, but let's at some location pull it down and keep our own
> copy(ies).
>
> Cheers,
>
> Richard
>
> On 2012-01-31 2:43 PM, Randy Riddle wrote:
>> I've worked in the tech field of Instructional Technology for two
>> decades and I'd disagree that cloud computing isn't a viable solution
>> in some situations.
>>
>> No, it's not workable for archives and institutional-level collections
>> unless there are legal and service agreements in place that make
>> migration out of it possible if new technologies or other issues come
>> along.
>>
>> For personal backups, I think it's reasonable and really something
>> that's needed for short-term backups with the move towards mobile
>> devices - laptops, iPads, and mobile phones - that are a hassle to
>> plug in and back up when you're constantly "on the go".
>>
>> What's really disturbing here is that the US government has seized the
>> whole enchilada, leaving individual users with legal backups and legal
>> short-term projects that they were working on with others in the
>> lurch.
>>
>> To me, it shows how much government officials misunderstand technology
>> trends and how much they're willing to "throw out the baby with the
>> bath water" for the benefit of large media companies that donate to
>> political campaigns.
>>
>> If the backups are destroyed, I'd personally call for a Congressional
>> investigation to make sure this kind of wholesale destruction of
>> individual data isn't legal.
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Richard L. Hess
>> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> Hi,Don,
>>>
>>> Corollaries:
>>>
>>> It was always foolish to trust the only copy of a file to a server that you
>>> do control.
>>>
>>> Just because they've put lipstick on the pig and called it "The Cloud"
>>> doesn't mean you can assume it's any different from a server that you don't
>>> control. At some point "The Cloud" has to resolve to a piece of hardware.
>>> We're not shoving data into those puffy white things that float by,
>>> sometimes dropping rain or snow on us.
>>>
>>> At it's best, "The Cloud" implies a fault-tolerant distributed system which
>>> can withstand multiple failures and is geographically diverse. I wonder how
>>> many "Cloud" applications are really that well engineered and managed.
>>>
>>> I did not feel comfortable after a tornado devastated downtown Goderich,
>>> Ontario last summer, so in addition to my two RAID 5 NAS units (one in each
>>> of two adjacent houses) for each piece of data, I added a steel ammo case
>>> full of notebook USB drives that get updated about every six months from the
>>> NAS units. These are kept across town (along a north-south axis as most
>>> tornadoes follow an east-west axis).
>>>
>>> The remote RAID 5 NAS unit is updated overnight from the local one over a
>>> fibre optic 100 Mb/s link (I'm too cheap to upgrade the media converters to
>>> gigabit), without propagating deletes, and some updates are not propagated
>>> (the theory being it's better to lose the edits than the original file).
>>>
>>> While I feel the pain of the people who lost data, and I'm sorry they lost
>>> data, I do not feel they were being responsible. I do know some people who
>>> rely on "cloud" backup, but if they were informed that their cloud backup
>>> was at risk, I'm certain (or at least I hope) they would migrate to local
>>> backup until they found another cloud. Personally, I am reasonably
>>> comfortable with three copies in three separate locations.
>>>
>>> Oh, and the steel ammo can might just protect those little notebook drives
>>> in USB cases from EMP should that scenario ever happen. Now, what would be
>>> left to read the drives???
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Richard
>>>
>>>
>>> On 2012-01-31 9:58 AM, Don Cox wrote:
>>>> It was always foolish to trust the only copy of a file to a server that
>>>> you don't control.
>>>>
>>> --
>>> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
>>> Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
>>> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
>>> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>
> --
> Richard L. Hess email: [log in to unmask]
> Aurora, Ontario, Canada (905) 713 6733 1-877-TAPE-FIX
> http://www.richardhess.com/tape/contact.htm
> Quality tape transfers -- even from hard-to-play tapes.
>
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