The Cloud Ate My Homework 305
theodp writes "Over at CNET, James Urquhart sings the praises of cloud computing, encouraging folks to 'really listen to what is being said, understand how the cloud is being used, and seriously evaluate how this disruptive model will change your projects, your organization, and even your career.' Fair enough. Over at the Google Docs Help Forum, some perplexed cloud computing users spent the month of November unsuccessfully trying to figure out why they've been zinged for inappropriate content. Among the items deemed inappropriate and unshareable include notes on Henry David Thoreau ('the published version of this item cannot be shared until a Google review finds that the content is appropriate'), homework assignments, high school yearbook plans, wishlists, documents containing botanical names for plants, a list of websites for an ecommerce class, and a list of companies that rent motorcycles in Canada. When it comes to support in the cloud, it kind of looks like you might get what you pay for."
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
Cloud computing as its being used in the tech rags, as in handing all of your data to an external provider who puts it on their "cloud", is basically the same as shared hosting, except people are using it to store much more sensitive data than they would ever dream of putting on a shared hosting service. That type of cloud computing is a foolish idea, and people need to get past the buzzword and see that, from the customer perspective, your data being in "the cloud" is meaningless...the important part is that you're handing total control over your data to a third party. What sort of technology infrastructure they actually use to host it is just a meaningless detail.
Censorship. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Censorship" is the proper word to describe this. The notion that I cannot express myself except in some "inoffensive" manner, for whatever values of "inoffensive" are acceptable to the owner of the cloud. I can see the "great wall cloud of China" already. Haven't big search companies already kowtowed to the Chinese government in order to access their markets? Is it inconceivable that Google would agree to Chinese government review of shared documents in order to serve the Chinese "cloud computing" market? I don't think it is.
Even here, imagine trying to write almost any kind of literary critique of Henry Miller, Ferdinand Celine or Vladimir Nabakov...
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
the important part is that you're handing total control over your data to a third party
There is nothing inherently wrong with trusting third parties. Trusting others is the basis for our modern society. We all trust others for critical things like water, food, and electricity. If I can trust others to provide this for me, surely I should be able to trust someone to store some bits for me.
The issue is finding a trustworthy third party. I won't argue whether Google is trustworthy or not, but in this case they sure seem to be stupid. It seems ridiculous for them to be scanning documents to see whether they are acceptable or not. A good "cloud provider" should simply focus on storing things reliably and leave the judgement of appropriateness to the users.
Re:clouds can be private (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:clouds can be private (Score:5, Interesting)
In those days you didn't waste expensive computer time for writing documents. There was an army of secretaries with typewriters. Speaker-independent voice recognition and intelligent spelling that was far more effective than today's computers. Best of all, you didn't have to touch a keyboard.
Yeah (Score:5, Interesting)
I repeatedly encouraged my girlfriend to store her PhD documents in Google Docs, rather than on her laptop (that she takes everywhere). Eventually she complied; then, after a week or so, all her Google Docs vanished without trace.
No previous versions, nothing. I was at a loss to explain it, and have you tried contacting Google with a tech support request? Not a chance.
She's reverted to her low-tech solution (keep on laptop, occasionally email self with document attachments as a backup). I can't blame her.
I'm not saying this WILL happen to anyone else, but it completely destroyed my faith in 'cloud' storage. I'm quite happy storing documents remotely, when I know where they are, but cloud storage by definition could be anywhere - or nowhere.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:1, Interesting)
Subversion for code and simple text. Dropbox for documents and anything else.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
I would edit my post to include that factoid too, if I could.
It's about control (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny that commenters with low membership numbers -- which I assume means folks who've been around the computer scene since the Stone Age -- make that point, while the ones with the What-Me-Worry attitude sound less experienced.
Cloud computing is just thin clients all over again, thin clients with graphics. Now all that remains to be seen is what we're willing to hand over in exchange for those nice shiny beads.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:2, Interesting)
That's terrible if you want any kind of control, though.
And it doesn't solve the problem of multiple people accessing the document (and editing it) at the same time.
It just hides the problem, and forces you to go back and see who did what. They make that easy, sure, but it's no easier than "Document - By Bob on Date" and "Document - By Jane on Date". In fact, this is what Google Docs essentially does.
The open access, open edit method Google Docs uses is great for sharing, but it's terrible if you want any kind of control over who can view/edit a document when, redaction, or in general any kind of workflow where all users are not equal or usage rights change over time.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
Bingo! I don't DEPEND on the "cloud" for my data storage, but I have no problem using it. Anything changed in the google docs version gets copied to my HD ASAP for my own piece of mind.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
if you can't get a wiki going then you sure as hell don't know enough to be relying on the cloud.
That's a pretty arrogant point of view, don't you think? Yes, I can easily build a web server and a wiki because I spend 40+ hours a week building networks and servers. My wife, on the other hand, spends 40+ hours a week creating and editing the documents that keep her two businesses running. She has neither the time nor the training to build, configure and properly secure either a web server or the applications that run on it. However, she is an incredibly intelligent woman. If she doesn't know enough to "rely on the cloud", then the only people who do are people like you and me who don't need the cloud because we can build it ourselves.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think we nerds are bad at naming things. From all I can tell, 'cloud computing' is the invention of consultants, VCs, vendors and other notorious buzzword merchants. Nerds come up with names like scrotwm [tommorris.org].
As for cloud computing? It's a really dumb buzzword. People have had applications running on the Internet for a long time. Some of these are somehow 'cloud' and others aren't. Apparently, Gmail's IMAP servers are in the cloud, while my university's IMAP servers are just on the dull old Internet. If I store stuff on Dropbox or whatever, I've got stuff in the cloud. If I store them on an FTP server, just dull old Internet. If cloud computing is accessing applications over the Internet, then we've been doing cloud computing since the 80s with telnet. If cloud computing is virtualization, then we've been doing that for some time too. But it's neither: it's just a buzzword. See Larry Ellison's brilliant rant [youtube.com].
UbuntuOne was the last straw for me - I saw that and am moving all my Ubuntu machines over to Debian Sid. I trust the Debian community not to get sucked into stupid marketing hype.