Microsoft forecasting clouds - for everyone.

TanyaC said:

Cloud storage is just as prone to failure as local storage

The decision to not use cloud storage is yours, and in your case I guess makes sense. But that statement is simply untrue. The drives have more durability, are redundant and fault-tolerant, and data is generally distributed. Why go to such lengths if they're such greedy money-grubbers? Simply: Good service brings customers.

The solution to most or all of your issues with cloud storage is to not go with a "cloud storage" provider but with a raw storage provider like Amazon. For a company like Amazon, reputation is everything. The cost of making sure data is secure and reliable is pocket change compared to what they stand to lose if their reputation is tarnished.

It's your choice not to trust or use cloud storage, but it has plenty of legitimate uses and there's no reason for baseless bashing. Nobody has yet tried to claim IP rights for uploaded data (encryption, anybody?), when somebody does, well, abandon ship. For every host that tries that, another will denounce them in an attempt to steal their business. And cloud storage (from a decent provider) is provably more reliable than any local storage you could put together yourself.

Ranger4 said:

I think most of the problems with cloud storage for most home users is the limit on your monthly IP allowance. I have a monthly limit of 8Gb & when exceeded I drop down to about dial up speed. So any large files are going to burn up that limit very quickly.
Also my upload speed is only about 500,000Kb per second, so it's going to take a month of Sundays to upload any sizeable file.

Hi there

.................."And therein lies the rub"......................

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there

I think the recent events at EBAY show the inherent dangers of trusting too much in "Remote Services". My experience with some of this stuff is that it's usually OFFSHORED to the cheapest possible places where "Quality Control" is something that if they've heard of at all exists only in Science Fiction. Also with very low wages it wouldn't surprise me if it's relatively easy for people with criminal intent and "Loadsamoney" to bribe some of the staff in these places for access.

I remember recently when an off shored facility - I think it was in Bangalore(?) or somewhere like that used by "Sharkley's" (Aka Barclays) Bank was compromised - an undercover Newspaper reporter was able to BUY pin numbers for Credit and Debit cards at around a few US dollars per 1000 "job lots". !!!

I often wonder why a lot of sites require you to REGISTER if just BUYING something -- surely if I give a valid payment method and delivery address then that should be sufficient. With Click and Collect these days you don't even HAVE to have deliveries at home if you don't want to.

People are much too trusting these days with e-crime. Because they don't SEE physical evidence of crime they assume it doesn't exist until it's too late -- and how many sites have you ever used where you need to give a PASSPHRASE rather than a password -- very very few.

Just store on the cloud pure Data that doesn't contain any personal info -- anything else if it has any sort of commercial value - sooner or later it's bound to be compromised -- and with the advent of QUANTUM COMPUTERS the whole idea of passwords and today's classical encryption will be made obsolete anyway.

Cheers
jimbo

Hi there

For Snail Mail I refuse to even OPEN any letter that has "Windows" -- if people want to send me bills then they can do it by EMAIL or even mobile phone text. If I have to ever go to court for "non payment" I'd simply say I'm not trying to avoid payment --I'm helping to keep the planet green by only wanting e-bills, and save all that diesel etc that the postman has to use plus all the paper --Trees aren't that common in Iceland anyway.

If you get a Bovine answer from the Bank for example (now almost all Govt controlled here anyway) saying "We don't do email" -- then that's THEIR problem not yours. Any decent Court on this planet would side with you - especially if they knew it wasn't a question of you simply finding ways of NOT paying legitimate bills. Besides the Postman doesn't then also risk getting Bitten by my Dogs. !!

Cheers
jimbo

people can hate mt following comment but as far as i'm concerned it's apt.

i'm forecasting rain for those fool enough to trust their data to others.