[ Date Index ] [ Thread Index ] [ <= Previous by date / thread ] [ Next by date / thread => ]
On 24/04/13 19:22, Brad Rogers wrote:I think we're very much in agreement here - I was limiting my comment to
> On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 16:48:59 +0100
> bad apple <mr.meowski@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Hello bad,
>
>> The "cloud" - whatever it is currently being defined as in market
> And there's the rub "whatever it..." They can change it, you can't.
consumer cloud storage really though so Dropbox, Skydrive, etc. I
suppose free email services such as Gmail, Hotmail, etc kind of count as
well, but then since inception they've always been a bunch of remote
servers you don't control anyway. They may now be "in the cloud" but
nothing has changed there particularly except the backend architecture
has matured from crappy old clusters to load balanced VMs.
Totally agreed that abusive and one-sided T&Cs seem to be all the rage
> If you're happy to sign up with companies that may shut down their
> service at any time, lose data without having to compensate you, have
> T&Cs that deny you the right to negotiate terms but give them the
> absolute right to change the aforesaid T&Cs at any time, give rights of
> use of your data to them, give them the right to delete content they
> deem inappropriate, etc, then fine, you sign up.
these days, and it's a terrible reflection on society in general that
this type of corporate bullshit is allowed to proliferate right under
the noses of regulators and watchdogs. Of course, commercial entities
have much sounder agreements with lawyer-approved SLAs and certain
guarantees in place so for them enterprise level cloudy operations are
much less inbalanced, as they'd need to be if you were spending
$millions on scaling out to a massive AWS cluster or something. Notably,
that didn't seem to help much in cases like Megaupload or the recent
collapse of the large British provider 2e2 even for the legitimate,
large paying customers!
For my much less demanding personal usage none of your - entirely
justified - complaints are an issue though: I'm only using free
services, anonymously and pretty much only for casual backups and
convenience. They can't lose my data, because I've got the original
copies. They can give my data to anyone they like (good luck getting
into it though). T&Cs don't matter to me - I don't even bother reading
them. Anytime a company folds or pisses me off too much, no problem, I
just switch from Dropbox to SpiderOak or SparkleShare or any one of the
thousands who will give me a few Gbs online for nowt. I generally treat
them with even greater contempt than they try to treat me with :]
This is the only thing you said that I disagree with I think, and that's
> Use of heavy crypto is no guarantee of security either. It's even
> possible that using cryptography may get your data flagged for deletion
> and account terminated with extreme prejudice because the companies
> holding said data don't want the hassle they might get from the local
> law enforcement if they continue to host it. In part, it was an excuse
> to dump services they no longer wished to host I know, but look what
> several USA based ISPs did WRT their NNTP service after events in New
> York.
because it's factually incorrect. Did you mean something else entirely?
I'm referring of course to your "use of heavy crypto is no guarantee of
security either" but I'm not going to labour the point because I'm
guessing you meant something more nuanced that I simply failed to grasp.
Interesting point though: I suppose it's possible that a provider could
potentially deep-scan files looking for magic numbers indicating
encrypted payloads but unless there was collaborative evidence of some
other kind of wrong doing they'd have no reason to blacklist you that
immediately suggests itself. And of course, if say Google Drive dropped
me because I insist on encrypting my files then fair enough, I'd simply
jump ship to one of their competitors in the blink of an eye.
Could you tell me more about USA ISPs dropping NNTP services though?
I've not heard of this and it sounds quite interesting.
I don't just admit to it, I'm proud of it! Certainly I'd like to see
> Finally, the facts that you admit to using crypto, a need for
> scepticism, etc. indicates to me you're not really happy about the way
> it all operates.
>
changes - mostly legislative - but as things stand I have no problems
with simple cloud services for file synchronization and the like. But as
I said before, I wouldn't go near iCloud or Microsoft's similar service
for syncing OS/personal data via their cloud tools *ever*, and as for
Facebook, etc, just no. I don't control it, can't encrypt it and it's
100% personally identifiable and in all likelihood tied to credit cards,
etc. No thanks!
One thing I can tell you though is that 99.9% of the world's computer
users are nowhere near as sceptical or untrusting as us, and like it or
not, it's the future. That is quite probably not a good thing but there
isn't anything we can do about it, other than staying abreast of the
changing technical landscape so we can maintain the skills we need to
keep all our critical stuff in-house.
Regards,
Your fellow cloud sceptic
--
The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG
http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list
FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq
-- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq