What Kindle and Cloud Computing Giveth, They May Taketh Away
Do your own Googling on Amazon’s bad last week. The hell with you if the screen breaks because the cover we sold you broke it (rescinded). Bought a book? You only thought you bought that book. Turns out, like most software and internet services, you didn’t buy anything, you paid for a use license, that can be “poofed” at the provider’s discretion, anytime, for whatever reason.
I’ve talked to a number of people this year about archiving files online, lawyers even. They seem to have no problem sending important stuff to some server somewhere.
I think they’re nuts. My recent Windows debacle aside, what would I tell my clients if Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. decided my license to put my stuff on their server had a wee problem and they had poofed it?
Don’t want them to block your access to your treasured photos, financial records and so on? They can. Cloud compute and Kindle at your own risk.
6 comments:
I think they’re nuts. My recent Windows debacle aside, what would I tell my clients if Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, etc. decided my license to put my stuff on their server had a wee problem and they had poofed it?
No joke that. I gave up on Windows completely because, as a software developer, I couldn't abide a company that claimed the right to determine, at their sole discretion, what software runs on my machine.
Don't put it in the cloud, put it on a portable hard-drive and stuff it in your safety deposit box. Ever two months swap the drives. Has worked for me for years.
They can take my computer, but my data is always safe. (I use encrypted virtual drives, but that's another story entirely.)
This comment was meant to be a post; but, GoGo Internet (the Foosball folks) don't show my full page- I can't sign in. But I'm literally cloud computing on my Google phone at 27,000 feet inside an AirTran 717, somewhere over North Carolina. I'm so trendy.
I don't trust that stuff, but for a different reason.
The Bush Administration illegally wiretapped telephones, and when they got caught they simply passed a law granting themselves immunity.
I have no confidence at all that this won't happen again, and again, and again.
It's not much of a stretch to assume they snooped on other forms of data, too. Your legal documents would be an especially tempting prize.
The whole trend is leaning towards 'online' everything. Just look at Google Apps for business... it's literally the cats ass for everything. Our business uses it.
Our business doesn't use it for proprietary data and we still back up all of data on an internal server.
This leads to the next question - we are we running two sets of applications? I thought we were smarter than that. I think we were hoping 'they' would be smarter.
I think I will stick with "analog" books for now.
Hey Ryan, good to hear from you.
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