'The Cloud': Another term for the Internet. Or maybe not, the term 'cloud' generally revolves around not only viewing data, but keeping it on the Internet, or indeed, assigning large amounts of raw computing power to output their result to a smaller device incapable of performing the same thing; truth be told, the 'Cloud' has been with us for a very long time.

Anyway, for the last week, I've been living in the 'Cloud', and it has been a rather nice experience.

Specifically, I've been using Mozilla Weave and Ubuntu One.

Google reader allows me to read my RSS feeds, and, being a website, it remember which ones I've read, and which ones I haven't.

Ubuntu One should be known to most by now; it allows you to keep 2gb of data on the web.

Mozilla Weave is a Firefox plugin that keeps your computer's Firefox installations in sync (bookmarks, history, login data, etc)

Now, I'm a student, I have two computers (plus the computers my college provides). It's been very, very nice to be able to sit down and do work on one computer, upload it, and find it on my other computers. It's also been handy to find my history saved across my computers.

Of course, it isn't just these two services; KDE itself has the KGetHotNewStuff system, which in a way, is another form of working with the cloud. Gwenview and Digikam can both import and export from multiple sites.

I suppose you could say that I, like many, do not see Cloud Computing as The Next Stage (TM) but I DO see it as a very, VERY useful tool when working across multiple computers.

Just how does that differ from a home directory on a NFS volume? Sounds like a very old hog in my ears ...

samhain wrote:Just how does that differ from a home directory on a NFS volume? Sounds like a very old hog in my ears ...

I see two main advantages. First, the NFS volume would be accessible to all the computers in your home, but with cloud computing it's accessible on any computer that has internet access anywhere in the world. You could set up your NFS drive with an IP address so that you could access it from anywhere, but it would be difficult to get it to be like Gmail or Google Reader where it's as easy as just going to a website.

The second advantage is data security. My data that is stored on my computer at home could be lost tomorrow by a hard drive failure. I do own a Drobo and have some more important files on that, but still I feel like there's a higher chance of losing my data on the Drobo than losing my data stored on Google's servers. If people's Gmail archives started getting lost, that would probably be the end of Google's services. No one would trust them anymore. So the amount of redundancy and failsafes they have set up is probably massive, and definitely more than any of us could afford to set up in our home.

Hm. If you remove the term "bee like software xyz" then you still have a NFS (what implementation ever) + a big security problem.

So do you buy electricity from your local utility company? Why? It's just the same thing as if you buy a gas generator and hook it up to your house.

You trust your goverment? God bless you. BTW, I've got a bridge to sell ...

I trust that I'll have electricity for the foreseeable future, at least. I have 100 years of past data to support my belief.

Every day the chicken gets food from it's farmer.
"I trust that I'll have food for the foreseeable future, at least. I have 100 days of past data to support my belief."
On day 101 the farmer thinks it's time for chicken soup ...

I trust neither the government nor the cloud. Cloud computing is the worst thing about the whole Web 2.0 thingy. I don't even leave my e-mails in the cloud.

My data is with a company that can show signs of problems, before there are problems;

With Ubuntu One, there is not one copy of a file, but three (in my case)

One in 'the cloud', another on computer 1 and the third on computer 2.

Now, to many this sounds like an already-done technology; truth be told, it IS;

However, I'd rather not deal with my own server, and I'd much prefer someone else did it for me; if I'm 10 miles away and my server goes down and I need files on it NOW...what do I do?

If I ran my own, I'd end up doing whatever it was that I lost; I don't trust ALL my data to the cloud and say that's that. I trust data that I already have copies of and that it is a convience to have updated no matter where I work.

You have more faith in your hosting company that I am capable of. Me, I keep a server at home for sharing stuff on my home/office network. I can also access it remotely (and I trust my own custom-built Debian Lenny server far more than I trust any hosting company; it's never failed me yet), but even that's not enough... my data gets saved on a USB flash stick and travels with me.

I have to admit, the idea of using a machine that I do not have physical access to is disconcertingb; must be the same for you, too, if you put it on a memory stick!

Yup. I recognize that this makes me a dinosaur in the computing world but I will never, ever trust the cloud.

You're not alone. It's great for short-term collaborative processes. I use it to work with others on a shared document. I'd never use it for anything that had longer term importance to me. And I'm sure many other won't, either.

It's a great tool (the reason for my original posting was, after all, to try and see if I could sway some others into trusting this service) but that said, it's a tool; not a workbence (in other words: Makes things easier, but not a core paradigm)

My Android phone also uses 'the cloud'; contacts are synced to my Google account (yes, the data can be easily turned into VCard and inserted in any system) and many applications (like Shazam and Google Goggles) use servers for the number crunching, as music identification and item identification are quite heafty tasks...