Microsoft forecasting clouds - for everyone.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

I wonder who came up with the idea that everybody wanted all their computing devices to work and look like all their other computing devices?
A phone is used for phone calls.
A tablet is used for playing tinker toy stuff and thrown away when broken.
A desktop/Laptop is used for everything computing and is repairable if need be.

I'm I showing my age? May be; I still remember using a party line phone attached to a wall with a operator listing.

Actually, you're showing both our ages, Jack.

I don't have a problem with a computer multitasking when possible. Heck, my desktop machine doubles as a HTPC, which replaces my DVD player and my old music system, and even serves as an e-book reader; I have it patched into my TV so I can read books from it while laying in bed. I use a wireless mouse as a remote.

However, there are limits to how much multitasking any device can do and the smaller the device, the greater the limits are. Trying to make an OS work on a small device severely limits what can be done on device with larger and multiple displays. An input method that works well on devices with small displays is grossly inefficient on larger devices. Besides what the so called experts are saying, the PC is far from dead; stagnant, mayhap, but not dead.

Of course, if all one needs a computer for is making phone calls, emails, texting, and keeping up with social media and wants to be connected 24/7 by an electronic umbilical cord, then a small device is all one needs.

 

[scr]

The "cloud" sure isn't for anyone using a Verizon cell modem, not even for a small backup. I keep my C:\ drive as small as possible, around 50 GB.

If I wanted to back it up to the cloud it would take me 10 months to upload it and 10 months to restore it. That's providing that I didn't use the Internet for anything else. I have a 5 GB cap per month. Of course I could go over that cap but at $10.00 a MB it would get real expensive.

I use Reflect to image my drives to an external HDD and a USB pen drive. Even with Reflects compression of the drive image it would take me 5 months in both directions. I keep the pen drive in my truck, obviously well hidden, just in case something happens to the RV which is my full time home. For documents pictures and music I use other pen drives and DVDs. We won't talk about bandwidth speed and how many hours all the cloud stuff would take.

Most of the time I'm in not areas that have 4g, the more remote the better. However, my speed has increased due to everyone formally on 3g running to the latest and greatest.

My Desktop PC serves many uses as well given the limited space of an RV.. sound system, living room TV, slide show and of course mapping routes and keeping track of costs.

I guess my age is clear when I say my mother was one of the people that you spoke to on those old phones. Two words I would never say to my mother out of nothing other then fear of what would happen if I did. The two words were ..."Number Please"

 

[msgerbs]

There is no difference between a free 25 gig Onedrive account and a paid for 25 gig Onedrive account,
Besides the costs,
The disclaimers of loss of data are identical,
The same terms of use are identical on all cloud services free or otherwise,
Cheers.

Exactly.

I have external drive backups and internl drive backups. But I would not trust storing it in the cloud.

And when your building burns down, taking both your internal and external drives with it? Sure, you could be shipping tapes offsite, but you're still relying on somebody else to transport and store your data. What is the difference between doing it in hosted storage ("Cloud storage") or offsite physical media? Other than that with hosted storage you have on-demand access and the provider can duplicate it across multiple sites. Offsite physical media can restore massive amounts of data much faster, depending upon your SLA and the bandwidth you have to your hosted storage. There's no one solution that works for everybody, but simply writing off "the cloud" as a dangerous scam is foolish and sort-sighted attitude with little place in a fast-moving, forward-thinking industry.

 

[msgerbs]

Hi there

Cloud is NOT viable for HOME users as a BACKUP system -- most people I know have Music / Video libraries of SEVERAL TB - now most cloud providers will possibly give a user say 50 GB -- by NO way good enough -- and in a lot of countries you STILL pay for broadbad bandwidth - you need an UNLIMITED usage for decent size backups and you need very fast broadband as well -- most people also forget that even with FAST download - upload can be up to 10X SLOWER !!!

Might not matter in uploading a few files to a file sharing site but uploading several HUNDRED GB will take a while !!!

I think businesses don't have to worry about this as they don't use "ISP's" in the classic sense - the larger companies also have dedicated line / cable systems.

The only time it might make sense as an individual is say you were a journalist and you needed to get pictures and your story out of for example N.Korea etc where normal email etc can't be relied on.

Cheers
jimbo

Where did those TBs of music and videos come from? Surely not original content by them personally. It's most likely either pirated, or purchased off some service like iTunes, Amazon, etc. so why would they need to back that up? Back it up locally if you want, but there's no need to back that up to hosted storage. If your house is destroyed, are you really going to care about your TBs of ripped music? No, you're going to care about your finances, your family photos, etc. The ones that were just destroyed along with your pretty little NAS, if you didn't have offsite backups of some sort or another. Besides, there are multiple reputable backup services that offer unlimited or very high-limit storage, so your point about "50GB limit" is wrong. Sure, downloading it will take ages (Some places ship you disks!) but it's a lot better than it being gone forever, is it not?

 

[TanyaC]

The "Cloud" is a scam.

It's all part of a government conspiracy to get hold of our private data. They will eventually do what Instagram did - Claim that by uploading to their cloud servers you sign over all intellectual property rights to them. (I'm only half kidding).

Nope, unless they stop making HHDs, SSDs and and all other other forms of local storage, I will never use cloud.

 

[msgerbs]

The "Cloud" is a scam.

It's all part of a government conspiracy to get hold of our private data. They will eventually do what Instagram did - Claim that by uploading to their cloud servers you sign over all intellectual property rights to them. (I'm only half kidding).

Nope, unless they stop making HHDs, SSDs and and all other other forms of local storage, I will never use cloud.

Read my post above yours about why that's a suicidally bad idea.

 

[ThrashZone]

Someone seems consumed by fire theory

 

[HammerHead]

Fire! Fire!

I'm trying not to think about it. I have no interest in THE CLOUD.

 

[ThrashZone]

lol Bob looks like your already on Fire

 

[TanyaC]

The "Cloud" is a scam.

It's all part of a government conspiracy to get hold of our private data. They will eventually do what Instagram did - Claim that by uploading to their cloud servers you sign over all intellectual property rights to them. (I'm only half kidding).

Nope, unless they stop making HHDs, SSDs and and all other other forms of local storage, I will never use cloud.

Read my post above yours about why that's a suicidally bad idea.

If I read your post correctly you are advocating FOR cloud storage.

For me, I have very little in digital form that I can't afford to lose. Sure, I do backups to optical disk, and the important stuff is stored offsite (at my brothers). But the critical stuff, like insurance policies, bank details, will(s) and so on is mostly hard copy with scanned back ups. They are stored with my solicitor with extra copies in a safe.

Not everyone does it like that, but that still doesn't sway me to want to sign over the rights to all digital data to a third party, who will then tell me that can do as they please (including sell for profit), my personal digital data.

Besides that, these could companies really do NOT care about your data. All they care about is their profit margin. Cloud storage is just as prone to failure as local storage, but then you have a number of other factors influencing access to your data, like MONEY up front, Internet Access and so on..

Nope, I will stubbornly stand my ground. No cloud for me.

 

[msgerbs]

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]

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.

 

[jimbo45]

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

 

[lehnerus2000]

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.

I assume you mean 500kbs (500Mbs is great, we only get 5Mbs download and 1Mbs upload here).

 

[Ranger4]

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.

I assume you mean 500kbs (500Mbs is great, we only get 5Mbs download and 1Mbs upload here).

Yes you are correct, I did end up putting in too many zeros. 500kbs upload is about right.
Sorry about the error.

 

[jimbo45]

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

 

[Fantail]

I have always tried to minimize any personal data 'out there'. But sooner or later due to online shopping or other transactions your data is subject to compromise. Step by step the system wants to burn it into you. For example when my employer switched 401k plans, now the current one is for the most part all online. Sooner or later company's will be able to extort fees for security based on fear of data loss alone. If they are not stepping into that to some degree already. Anything and everything they can do, one step at a time to get every last coin from you possible. Of course if it was done all at once then - gosh some people might resist to much. Big government follows the same game plan as we speak.
Anyways, no cloud back-up for me. I have sufficient local back-up. And even with that, from the desktop or the laptop, boot drives, secondary etc., if all was lost I could start over with out any life ending data crippling emotionally detaching catastrophe.
Oh by the way I do have a request for any company that insists on sending me snail mail advertising about data, internet speed - security, or whatnot - would you please base your letters or flyers on regular paper with soy based ink. Otherwise, when they go into the paper shredder I can't use the material in the composter.

 

[jimbo45]

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

 

[The Nude Dude]

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.

 

[FerchogtX]

Having issues like the latest "Heartbleed" bug or the recent Ebay anouncements, they still try to force people into a cloud computing?... maaaaaaaaaan... The most secure thing in my life is me and ME controling what I store and what not, I wouldnt trust anyone to hold my data, adding to that, in many cases, is the same people that sold valuable personal information to the NSA without hesitating.

Are you trusting this people?