[aklug] Re: Dropbox oops

On Sun, Jul 03, 2011 at 08:28:03PM -0800, Joshua J. Kugler wrote:
> On Saturday 02 July 2011, Bruce Hill elucidated thus:
> > The next email in my Inbox is from Dropbox ... new Terms of Service.
> > I wonder if it lessens their liability when I'm hacked. Still an old
> > school type of guy ... nothing stored online that isn't expendable.
>
> I'm thinking about using Cloud Storage (name rackspace) for backup soon.
> You better believe everything is going to be PGP encrypted before it
> goes up.
>
> j

Having not fully investigated "the cloud" or other "virtualization"
options, my biggest concern is accessibility of data. For instance...

We took a check to open a new bank account for this new business. The
woman could not enter our information, because "our computers are down",
or some such excuse. Turns out they had a power failure and *one* of the
switches at their data center was not on UPS. It was several hours before
she was able to access their software again -- from information she wrote
on a piece of paper with a pen, and photocopies. :-)

There have been other people we know using offsite apps and storage who
couldn't reach their data, and couldn't run apps. Because it was not
local, and the people hosting it were more interested in doing damage
control to *save face* they had no idea when it would be accessible.

I don't want software we use, or data we want to access, stored on someone
else's computer. What happens when *they* lose it all, or *they* decide
you don't get your data back at all?

It *has* happened before, and it *will* happen again.

-- 
Happy Penguin Computers               >')
618 N. Gloster                        ( \
Tupelo, MS 38804                       ^^
support@happypenguincomputers.com
662-269-2706 662-205-6424
http://happypenguincomputers.com/
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.