What is cloud computing?

Cr00zng said:

Google also provides semi-private email services for some of the Universities for free of charge; it would be a surprise if they don't do data mining for these services as well.

Cloud providers will find a way to follow Google's footsteps and now even Microsoft jumps on this bandwagon, "Into the cloud...".

Actually, Google is not really the pioneer of this, other than to intorduce it to the internet on a much larger scale. We (the public) have no idea just how much data has been collected on each of us, and has been for quite some time.

Use a credit card? Your name is connected to every purchase you've made with it, along with information of where you bank, balances, payment history, etc. This goes for however many CCs you have.

Have a grocery store (or any store...) rewards or discount card? Data in place, no mining necessary. No need even for a CC here, as you register with your personal info to obtain it. A CC is frosting on that cake.

The reality is that The Cloud is an extension of a system that has already been in place and designed to profit at the expense of our 'private' information.

The real danger here is when all of this data is put together and a complet profile is born (more complete than we can imagine).

Ever see the movie 'Eagle Eye'? A bit extreme, but nonetheless a very real concept. To think that there won't be those entities that won't take advantage of it, corporate, government or otherwise, is merely closing one's eyes to the (soon coming) reality.

Oh, and every post we make here and elsewhere? A permanent and easily obtained record of our opinions, thoughts, vents, rants, etc. Privacy is an endangered 'concept.

Sounds paranoid, doesn't it. Perhaps as crazy as the thought of a man walking on the moon?

More of my paranoic spew...

James

James Colbert said:

Actually, Google is not really the pioneer of this, other than to intorduce it to the internet on a much larger scale. We (the public) have no idea just how much data has been collected on each of us, and has been for quite some time.

While other companies had collected data on us for years, they did not share it with other companies and seldom sold their collection of data about their customers. As such, the collection has not been available to the highest bidder.

It is Google that introduced it to the Internet on a large scale. During this process they've also monopolized the large scale roll out successfully without any government objection. There are people who believe that Google has already achieved total control of the Internet; here's an attached PDF file from googlemonitor.com that seems to think just that.

The reality is that The Cloud is an extension of a system that has already been in place and designed to profit at the expense of our 'private' information.

The real danger here is when all of this data is put together and a complete profile is born (more complete than we can imagine).

The cloud is not an extension of the information collected by grocery stores, shops, etc. The public cloud had became available first when the WEB 1.0 (uni-directional) changed to WEB 2.0 (bi-directional). People have flocked to voluntarily give up their privacy information with the intent to share it with their friends. Not realizing that the "free" service offered by Google, FaceBook, etc has a catch...

Ever see the movie 'Eagle Eye'? A bit extreme, but nonetheless a very real concept. To think that there won't be those entities that won't take advantage of it, corporate, government or otherwise, is merely closing one's eyes to the (soon coming) reality.

I haven't seen it yet but what I've heard about the movie, it is not in the near future; it is already here.

Oh, and every post we make here and elsewhere? A permanent and easily obtained record of our opinions, thoughts, vents, rants, etc. Privacy is an endangered 'concept.

Having this forum pages include the Google analytic scripts and other end user monitoring scripts most certainly help Google to keep a tab on us. There's a reason why Google already has 800 TBs of data collected already...

Sounds paranoid, doesn't it. Perhaps as crazy as the thought of a man walking on the moon?

More of my paranoid spew...

I hate to upset you, but for me it sounds more like a reality now.

Alternatively, I could be just as paranoid as you...

Cr00zng

Many people have had a hard time preventing infos leaking, system crashing caused by softwares mal-functions and virus from f* up their jobs . Hackers are ubiquitous, not to mention crackers and a whole bunch of bad guys that may compromise your work very easily if you don´t watch out.

First thing that spring to my mind and i think is the most worrying one, is the information leaking. My job is to create schedules. As far as i´m concerned, there´s no way in hell one can make me believe that i´d be safe anywhere other than my company servers. As Flatlands said, nobody would be crazy enough to create a schedule, as in my case, that will be used in negotiating a contract and let it exposed to only god knows what or who. Of course, another issue that a body gotta take on board is that when it comes to self-independence, you´d be in their hands so as to speak.

Some years ago, some companies had already tried, in a experimental study, to set up servers where users would use the softwares installed in the server instead of having them installed in their pcs. Well, as it seems, it didn´t turn out very well.

Not to tell that i´m picking on "Cloud computing" i´d like to ask 3 simple questions:
- Is there an emergency plan if the server crash when i´m doing my job?
- What if i´m in a business meeting and i have to present a schedule and the server has an authentication problem and deny me access to the data?
- What would happen if i´m working to a tight dealine and my dealine is " I need this tomorrow first thing" and the internet crashes?
zorg