Comments

1. But I think whatever you do, your server setup would always be less reliable than Google’s infrastructure.

   They have anti-spam, anti-DOS, failover, redundancy, backups, staff 24/7, permanent people doing architecture etc.

   The only thing I am worried about is not servers failing but Google owning my personal data. It’s there somewhere in the cloud.

   heri11 August 08 at 10:18 pm

2. Nice post, and great question but do we have another choice ? For several years, we do trust the clouds and and we now do rely on them for our affairs – from the bucks to the loving stories.

   We are legion, every day, 24/365 twitting, facebooking, blogging, youtubing and every 2.0 thing ing you want. No, we have no other choice to be there, here, to junp in the current of theses numeric rivers and trying, together, to change a bit their trajectories.

   Yann Leroux12 August 08 at 5:47 am

3. Nice post, and great question
   but do we have another choice ? For several years, we do trust the clouds and and we now do rely on them for our affairs – from the bucks to the loving stories.

   
   

   We are legion, every day, 24/365 twitting, facebooking, blogging, youtubing and every 2.0 thing ing you want. No, we have no other choice to be there, here, to junp in the current of theses numeric rivers and trying, together, to change a bit their trajectories.

   Yann Leroux12 August 08 at 5:47 am

4. Rackspace’s datacenter was not ravaged by a fire…you might be thinking of The Planet who had an explosion in their power room recently, but there was no fire at Rackspace.

   John12 August 08 at 8:39 pm

5. 

   John, you’re absolutely right and I’m sorry for my confusion, I’ll make the change.

   Frederic Brunel12 August 08 at 8:44 pm

6. 

   Yann, I love the web and I know that for the moment we don’t have other choices for trusting these companies, in the hope they’ll keep our data safe forever.

   But there is no garantee whatsoever.

   Frederic Brunel12 August 08 at 8:49 pm

7. Rackspace’s datacenter was not ravaged by a fire…you might be thinking of The Planet who had an explosion in their power room recently, but there was no fire at Rackspace.

   John12 August 08 at 8:39 pm

8. 

   John, you’re absolutely right and I’m sorry for my confusion, I’ll make the change.

   fbrunel12 August 08 at 8:44 pm

9. 

   Yann, I love the web and I know that for the moment we don’t have other choices for trusting these companies, in the hope they’ll keep our data safe forever.

   
   

   But there is no garantee whatsoever.

   fbrunel12 August 08 at 8:49 pm

10. You’ve said the right thing: Can we trust these companies about our data. No, I don’t think so.

    Firstly because you can’t control where datas have been stored. Moreover, you don’t have access to the core backup system of the company in order to get your data at anytime.

    Secondly, as you noticed, for big damages on (very far) datacenters, you can only say : “yeap, we’ve got an issue there…Do you wanna play tic-tac-toe?”

    So in conclusion, I will say that “local” backup is much more safer than unknown-place-but-big-company backups. See other big companies? Do you really believe they only rely on private companies for backup systems? Ah ah, sure, No, they don’t.

    IMHO, to make secure data you have to get: secure connection, quite large bandwidth, and seamless backup/restore system for your machine or core data. Local synchronization, with RAID disks, is much more safer!

    n.b: And what about my old CPC6128 disks/programs ?

    Olivier Gardinetti13 August 08 at 3:26 am

11. You’ve said the right thing: Can we trust these companies about our data.
    No, I don’t think so.

    
    

    Firstly because you can’t control where datas have been stored. Moreover, you don’t have access to the core backup system of the company in order to get your data at anytime.

    
    

    Secondly, as you noticed, for big damages on (very far) datacenters, you can
    only say : “yeap, we’ve got an issue there…Do you wanna play tic-tac-toe?”

    
    

    So in conclusion, I will say that “local” backup is much more safer than unknown-place-but-big-company backups. See other big companies? Do you really believe they only rely on private companies for backup systems? Ah ah, sure, No, they don’t.

    
    

    IMHO, to make secure data you have to get: secure connection, quite large bandwidth, and seamless backup/restore system for your machine or core data.
    Local synchronization, with RAID disks, is much more safer!

    
    

    n.b: And what about my old CPC6128 disks/programs ?

    Olivier Gardinetti13 August 08 at 3:26 am

12. 

    The thing that worries me is that we don’t have any garantee that we would be able to access these data in the long term.

    I mean, if we want to trust the cloud as the master repository of our data, we need garantees. What would happen if one of those company bankrupt like say, Enron?

    I especially worry about not being able to aggregate back to my computer everything I produce online. But the more it grows online, the less I’d able to get it back.

    It’s like fire and forget.

    Frederic Brunel14 August 08 at 8:53 pm

13. 

    Olivier you raised a good point. I’d love to be able to access all my old programs I spent so many time working on — just for the sake of having them.

    I still have my floppies somewhere but I don’t even know how I could transfer them.

    Frederic Brunel14 August 08 at 8:59 pm

14. 

    The thing that worries me is that we don’t have any garantee that we would be able to access these data in the long term.

    
    

    I mean, if we want to trust the cloud as the master repository of our data, we need garantees. What would happen if one of those company bankrupt like say, Enron?

    
    

    I especially worry about not being able to aggregate back to my computer everything I produce online. But the more it grows online, the less I’d able to get it back.

    
    

    It’s like fire and forget.

    fbrunel14 August 08 at 8:53 pm

15. 

    Olivier you raised a good point. I’d love to be able to access all my old programs I spent so many time working on — just for the sake of having them.

    
    

    I still have my floppies somewhere but I don’t even know how I could transfer them.

    fbrunel14 August 08 at 8:59 pm

16. Yeap, you’re right. “Big companies” have these kind of no-failure-features…
    
    And now? What can you do in order to retrieve any data at anytime if the company is out ? or even worse: if the company policy change … Do you have enougth money to bet ? Too risks for me.
    
    Actually, for your company, if you want “local access” and reliable servers you have to get dedicated hardware for this and pay people. There is no other way. Security has no price (like for airplanes…).
    
    Do you think that big companies (in Montreal) leave all their source code on google-like servers? Come on … Absolutly not.
    
    For individuals, it’s slighty different problem. You have to think about private data and “diffuse copy” of these data somewhere into the web … Hard to control actually.
    Moreover “antispam,anti-DOS, …” isn’t relevant in this case.You have just to enable synchronization disks with your machine and then unplug the backup hardware… much safer and faster

    Olivier Gardinetti15 August 08 at 3:11 am

17. … that bring me to post to my website, soon, an article about the “computing memory” .
    
    Yeap, A lot of programs seem to have “no memory” over the time, because there’re not very persistent across ages. Actually some of them can’t start on newer computers.
    You’ve to get emulators… if you manage to retrieve data from the exotic floppy disk (or tape) format!
    
    But it’s another story…

    Olivier Gardinetti15 August 08 at 3:22 am

18. 

    Actually, the Internet as no long-term memory either (could be the title of a post).

    Fred Brunel15 August 08 at 10:42 am

19. There is something really important here and it has to do with our changing idea of what is useful and what is important. The best time capsule I was offered in my life is my grandparents attic because it has never been organized to become one. On the other side, war reporters and historians agree on the fact that digital pictures brought a broad change in the historic material by flashing out the pictures that are not used in the media. It may sound bad but I can see some natural selection here. Who needs to keep everything ? Is it a good thing ?

    fredfred18 August 08 at 8:57 pm

20. 

    Privacy is a concern but putting that aside, I’d like to keep everything and at least be able to decide what to get rid off. Right now, I have neither of these: no (real) control on data I put online.
    
    Speaking about historians, what will be left for them, everything can be wiped in a fraction of second.
    
    That said, I think we’re living an exciting transition. There is still a lot of challenges.

    Fred Brunel19 August 08 at 12:16 am

21. This article from CNET http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10020902-75.h… brings a new picture to the reality of the way our crave for disk space reshapes our world.

    fredfred22 August 08 at 6:52 am

22. 10,000 servers a month! That's just crazy!
    
    I also heard that Google currently hit the 1,000,000 servers in their data centers and Facebook just added 50,000 servers to their infrastructure.

    Fred Brunel22 August 08 at 11:12 am

23. 

    10,000 servers a month! That's just crazy!
    
    I also heard that Google currently hit 1,000,000 servers and Facebook just added 50,000 servers to their infrastructure.

    Fred Brunel22 August 08 at 3:12 pm