On Oct 15, 2009, at 4:35 PM, Max Battcher wrote:
Bruce Bostwick wrote:
I haven't chimed in on Wave or the more general subject of cloud
computing yet, since I haven't used it yet (which, in some people's
judgment, makes me ineligible to comment, although I consider that
a questionable argument), but my misgivings about it are generally
related to the same question of how valid the underlying
assumptions are, as well as the overall reliability of the servers
the storage lives on.
In terms of specific to Google Wave: for now early adopters should
trust Google's storage policies (and considering the vast number of
people with Gmail addresses, many do), with the addition of the
Google way-early-beta caveat.
In the mid to long term other servers should start to pick up Wave
usage. The entire Java source to run your own Wave server is
available for use and adaptation and servers talk to each other in
similar ways to email servers (so Wave participant addresses right
now are things like [email protected], which look like
email addresses but aren't guaranteed to be one and the same). (More
accurately, the server to server protocols are based on the more
recent XMPP IM standards rather than decades-old email, but the
general idea is the same...)
(It seems to me that a lot of the hype around the cloud computing
concept is really thin on details of infrastructure, storage
reliability/redundancy and backup maintenance, privacy protection,
and a whole range of other unanswered questions I've had about it.
And for people who seem so eager to have me store my personal data
on their servers, a lot of those unanswered questions are show
stoppers for me.)
Well "cloud computing" has come to embody a lot of concepts,
generally, and can be anything from marketing droid speak to a
beloved panacea from the computing gods... To be honest the term in
common parlance doesn't seem to have a very well-defined meaning
anymore.
Generally, individual "cloud computing" providers should be able to
provide you with all of the details that you need, and your
questions are "unanswered", you may not be asking the right people...
All of the services that I use on a daily basis are very forthright
with that sort of information and I would say that I have days where
I am very paranoid.
It's hard to argue anything at a general "cloud computing" level,
and just like any other set of services you have to go into each
relationship with some idea of your intent and the company/entity's
trustworthiness. Perhaps if you named specific services or concerns
your questions might be answered.
Part of my concern with the concept in general is the fairly glaring
admin/management deficiency described in this article:
http://dailyqi.com/?p=10576
Even though Danger is owned by Microsoft, who is a proponent of
cloud-based computing where data is stored and possibly reproduced
across a number of services, only one server apparently was used.
This isn’t the problem here, but it’s the apparent lack of any data
backup by Danger is. The company’s statement on this should be very
interesting.
Granted, the mistake was fairly obvious, but it's hard to find out
about things like that up front. (Although, as you say, any provider
that's reluctant or outright unable to answer questions like "what
backup strategy do you use?" isn't a good choice ..)
"I'm probably not a typical Texan in that I don't hunt. I fish, but I
don't hunt. And it has nothing to do with how I think it might somehow
be more holy to eat meat that's been bludgeoned to death by someone
else, that's not it. It's really early in the morning, it's really
cold outside, and...I don't wanna **** go." -- Ron White
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