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Comments: 305 +- IT: The Cloud Ate My Homework on Tuesday December 01, @09:46AM
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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."
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That cloud word again (Score:5, Insightful)
This is exactly why I never want to move everything "in the cloud", or in to Internet services for that matter. Locally ran applications are there for a reason and things like this wouldn't happen for example with MS Office or Open Office. You're the one controlling your work, not some algorithms that suddenly decide to mark your work "inappropriate". And you don't have to wait for days for someone to answer to your support ticket with a copy-pasted "things to try" list.
Even if you're going for "cloud" services, get a reliable one that states exactly their backup plans and other things. And for gods sake, put out a few dollars for it if you're excepting any level of support or reliability.
Re:That cloud word again (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally agree.
All it takes is to save your document, send it to everybody you want to share it with (or upload it onto RapidShare). Then all you have to do is wait for the ones that have the same version of MS Office to send their modified version of the document, which you open and figure out what changed and then edit your local file, while the ones with another version of MS Office simply use the PC of their dad and send you their edits which don't reflect the current state of the document so you send them the most recent version and explain that you do not have to use a premium account on rapidshare and please check your spam folder because I have definitely sent the mail but forgot the attachment let me send it again maybe the virus filter ate it then zip it with a password did and check if you send Tom the latest version and remember he is using OpenOffice .
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Re:That cloud word again (Score:5, Insightful)
How you access your software is a distinct issue from software interoperability.
You think in the future of the Cloud there will only be one word processor? Not if the Cloud were to take off as the platform of the future there wouldn't. Look at the direction we're already heading. Someone complains about the lack of control in the Cloud, people say "use a pay service whose terms you like better".
Well, do you think there's just going to be one pay service? Or that it will give you access to everything for one flat rate? Maybe that will be the near-future model, while people are still getting their footing in this allegedly-new world.
If there's money to be made, the big players will each have a Cloud. They'll each support some set of software; why would you assume that it would all be the same, or even interoperable?
Sure, as long as you're using software that's part of a "free" service, anyone else can jump in and use the same software; but that's not the Cloud of the future, because there you have no leverage to control your content. (Sure, in this case Google's only limiting your ability to share the document; surely you don't think that's the only thing they could decide to do? Trust them to never decide to do more if you want; I don't.)
Even within a single cloud, are software companies forever going to give up on charging upgrade fees? do you really think they can't deliver incompatible versions of their software to those who don't pay for the latest and greatest, just because they're delivering it through the Cloud?
A lot of people have their head in the clouds.
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I would edit my post to include that factoid too, if I could.
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Google Docs, despite its weak formatting tools and apparently censorship issues (which I've never run into myself in my hea
Re:That cloud word again (Score:5, Informative)
Wiki?
Isn't this sort of the whole point of the wiki platform?
I'm not really into the "collaboration" stuff (never ended up in a situation where it applied - always had someone who 'owned' a doc and handled changes).
I don't buy into the cloud for the same reason that I bought a microcomputer in the first place. I wanted my stuff to be my stuff. Not under the control of anyone but me. At work we have always used shared folders and such - but I can't be the only one where everyone has their own annotated version of their docs?
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I'm not sure why you think I care about a solution for "sharing" homework (which when I went to school went by the shorter name "cheating")... but are you kidding me?
With the state of software today, if you can't get a wiki going then you sure as hell don't know enough to be relying on the cloud.
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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 enoug
Re:That cloud word again (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you could continue using google docs, but just keep offline backups of your files, or email the files to yourself, etc. Don't see what all the fuss is about.. anyone who doesn't keep backups of their important files, will either learn to do so the first time they lose data, or.. they're an idiot and are going to have problems on any system, as you point out.
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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:4, Insightful)
There's no, none, nada guarantee that your data is safe or secure when using ANY online system. Just look at what happened with the Sidekicks recently. Who would have ever thought that could ever happen? They had backups, they had RAID, they had redundant servers. But, shit happens, and it did, and it CAN happen to Google.
Plus, now you've got all this censorship bullshit. Well, it's not Censorship mostly, it's "protecting copyright." At all costs. It could easily disintegrate into real full-blown censorship, too.
These services will be popular and I'll probably even use them eventually, but only for documents and files that I don't care if people get their hands on, and that I don't care if I lose. For everything else, it's backups as usual.
There's services such as Carbonite and others that provide a way to back up your system in a mostly secure way. From what I understand, with Carbonite, everything is encrypted on their servers, and only your password will decrypt the files, even through the Web interface. This seems acceptable to me, and their servers aren't crawling through my documents making sure there's nothing copyright in there.
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Google Desktop saves indexes on their servers.
No it doesn't. Ever wondered what the gigabyte of index files on your drive is?
The fact that Google Desktop runs a (local) webserver that you access from a web browser doesn't mean it's sending any data across the internet.
There may be a feature to enable this, but it's not the default.
Re:clouds can be private (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:clouds can be private (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. If the word "cloud" means anything at all, it means that the server is owned and maintained by someone else. Thus "private cloud" is an oxymoron.
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Yes, and this is indistinguishable from the concept of "a server," which makes the "cloud" part of "private cloud" even more meaningless than usual. As I said.
Hey-Hey-You-You get off (Score:3, Funny)
ah you know the rest.
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.
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What does that mean, changing the timestamp on your secretary? How do you do it? The manual isn't exactly clear on working with secretaries.
I'm very confused.
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And those secretaries were much sexier than any computer hardware.
Sexier than computer hardware? I don't think so. Ye Gods, man, think before you post such nonsense here.
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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
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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
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I've still to hear a cogent explanation of how running your own servers can bring you the main "cloud" benefit, i.e. only paying for the resources that you actually need.
It only works if you're big enough.
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You don't see it?
As the number of users increases, the probability of them all hitting the service at once decreases. So you get a better ratio of hardware to users. Still, you need masses of servers for masses of users, so you get economies of scale (bulk buy discounts etc.).
Build a server room for one user -> bad VFM.
Build a server room for 100 users -> potentially worthwhile
Build a server room for 1000 users -> getting there.
A server facility for a million users -> cheap
If you're IBM, you can
Lesson learned (Score:5, Funny)
Worrying, but not terrible (Score:4, Informative)
This is a concern, but remember we're talking about the free service here. Google's free services are great while everything works, but if you need a human being's attention, you're likely to be waiting a long time. I've had bad experiences with YouTube publishing glitches.
I'd hope that the paid Google Apps service has much better support. Can anyone confirm?
Meanwhile, in these cases, all that these people were unable to do was make their docs public. They could continue to edit them. They could presumably share them with specific contacts.
I think there needs to be a fix for this, but I don't think it's the end of the world for SaaS.
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Why is google worrying about whether your content is even appropriate or not? Are they going to stop a neo-nazi publishing their beliefs? They're awful, but free speech is more important.
Tricky one. Link to their content policy: http://docs.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=148505 [google.com]
"Hate speech" is explicitly forbidden.
I think one angle is "We accept your right to free speech, but we won't be your vehicle for transmitting it."
But it's a bit of an ethical minefield, I accept.
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Perspective, chief. Before the Internet nobody but those with lots of money could ever transmit their ideas broadly. Before, say, the 1900's, nobody could, period. Now, sometimes you can, but if you rely on a free service to do it then they might set some restrictions; that doesn't sound like erosion of rights to me so much as it sounds like progress.
Google may provide tools that can enhance the effectiveness you enjoy when you exercise your rights, but that doesn't mean they're "abridging" your rights i
Rule #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
Rule #1 of cloud computing: "Do not trust the cloud".
Why is Google even able to review the content? Content should be encrypted.
Re:Rule #1 (Score:5, Insightful)
... google isn't minding its own goddamn business, it doesn't have to review private data shared between individuals, as long as its legal.
To the point, the question isn't "as long as it's legal" but rather, "as long as there is no legal warrant requiring overturn of documents to proper authorities." Google should NOT have any role in deciding whether something is legal in the first place, as that implies they have already reviewed your content and made an independent determination.
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A tragic little story (Score:5, Funny)
My Dad has a Cloud that my sister and I used to store our homework assignments.
One night, I was writing a paper on it, when all of a sudden it went berserk. The screen started flashing and the whole paper just disappeared. All of it.
And it was a good paper!
I had to cram and rewrite it really quickly. Needless to say, my rushed paper wasn't nearly as good and I blame that Cloud for the grade I got.
And I am totally not stoned right now. Really. Dude.
Review!? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ok, I understand that unencrypted content is never guaranteed to be safe, so don't put anything of value in there. But the general assumption people make is that there's just so much stuff in there and most of it is so uninteresting that nobody will probably bother looking at it, unless it happens to show up in debug traces by chance, or something of the sort.
But, "review" suggests somebody at Google *will* look at that content. Imagine that -- some drone at Google will be looking at your private work you want to share only with select people, or company data, and decide (when they get around it) that you can share it after all.
IMO just the possibility of this happening at all makes the whole thing suspect, and could bite you in the ass right in the worst moment. "Sorry boss, I can't share that report because Google thinks there's porn in it. We'll have to wait until somebody at Google looks at it". I'm sure that would make for an interesting day.
Re:Review!? (Score:5, Informative)
But, "review" suggests somebody at Google *will* look at that content. Imagine that -- some drone at Google will be looking at your private work
This part is certainly a big, big concern. I can understand why Google feels the need to do it -- they want to avoid facilitating a paedophile ring or whatever -- but normal users should expect that their data is not ordinarily looked at.
OTOH I'm sure there's something in the Google TOS about this. Ah here we go:
- 8.3 Google reserves the right (but shall have no obligation) to pre-screen, review, flag, filter, modify, refuse or remove any or all Content from any Service.
IMO just the possibility of this happening at all makes the whole thing suspect, and could bite you in the ass right in the worst moment. "Sorry boss, I can't share that report because Google thinks there's porn in it. We'll have to wait until somebody at Google looks at it". I'm sure that would make for an interesting day.
To be fair, you can always save-as HTML/RTF/DOC/etc. and send your boss that.
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Re:Review!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah yes, you can justify absolutely anything in the name of fighting child porn. At this rate soon everybody will get a rectal exam at the airport, just in case they have a flash drive in there.
But interestingly enough, the same filtering doesn't apply to email, AFAIK. So I don't get what's the point.
Yeah, that one is easy. The big deal is when you're really using the extra stuff google docs provides.
For instance, I worked in a situation where several developers located in different countries used google docs to work on the same document. If Google suddenly decides the document can't be shared, that throws a wrench in the works. Not the end of the world for sure, but it could be very annoying and very inconvenient. It will definitely mess up the workflow. All of a sudden, instead of getting work done people have to talk to each other to explain what happened, figure out a new workflow, a way to decide who works on what part, who to mail the changes to and so on.
And since Google can take whatever time it wants with the review, you don't even get an estimation of how long will this situation last. Very not cool.
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Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
Google: The reason for and reason for not moving to cloud computing!
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...
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No it's not. If I own a building I don't have to let you "express yourself" all over the wall.
Google owns it's servers and software. They let you use them, subject to certain conditions. If you don't like those conditions, don't use them (an approach which I take to a greater or lesser degree).
Censorship is serious. Save the rant for when there's actually some censorship going on otherwise we'll be in a crying wolf situation.
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Yes, censorship is censorship, and you're using the word incorrectly.
The guy whose homework was eaten may indeed find the situation very serious and he should certainly think twice about trusting important documents to third parties again, but he was not censored. He is free to distribute his ideas as he wishes, using his own means of communication.
To summarize: there is a problem, but it is not censorship.
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.
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.
Hardly a new story (Score:3, Insightful)
This sort of problem isn't at all new; it's much of why the "personal computer" approach took over computing back in the 1980s.
Before that, and still today in some large organizations, the "mainframe" was the only computer. When the little desktop computers started appearing, the "computer center" people in most companies and other organizations argued against them, mostly on the grounds that the work could be done much cheaper on the mainframe. Buying a lot of single-user machines was illogical from a purely cost-oriented viewpoint. But people kept finding ways to use their funds to buy the new little computers for a very simple reason: The mainframe was in the hands of a bureaucracy that had completely controlled what you could do on it. If you wanted to do something new (like run one of those newfangled "spreadsheet" programs), you had to go begging the DP people for permission. You couldn't install software on the mainframe yourself; the DP people had to install it for you. If they didn't think you needed it, you didn't get it. They usually had no idea what a "spreadsheet" was, so you couldn't get it. You couldn't have a terminal that did real-time interaction with software on the mainframe anyway, so a spreadsheet was sorta unusable on a mainframe.
So people bought the new little machines, not to save money, but so that they could do the things that the people in the computer department wouldn't allow them to do. Eventually the people at the top learned what was happening, and the sensible ones figured out that it was to their benefit to take the side of the workers and allow this to continue. The ones that forbid the use of desktop computers found that their company was slowly being made uncompetitive by the lack of ability to do the sorts of data processing (such as spreadsheets) that their competitors were doing.
The "cloud computing" idea has its merits. But it will always have the same problems that mainframe computers had. It will be under the control of the giant organizations (mostly secretive corporations) that run the cloud. Those organizations will have unfettered access to any data stored on their part of the cloud, and will use your data for their own purposes whenever they see a profit in doing so. If they don't like something you're doing, they will be able to block it. If you want control of your own data for any reason, you will have to keep it and the associated software on hardware that you own and control. If you don't, you'll find your pictures of your kids being used commercially. If your photo collection contains a picture of your kids in the bathtub or otherwise naked, they'll be labelled as "child porn" and deleted or sent to your local police. (Gotta bring in "Think of the children" here. ;-)
It's the way things have always worked, and always will. There are reasons people want privacy, some frivolous and some serious. And there are things that are best done in public settings. For those things, the "cloud" will be a big win for everyone.
Standards? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll use the cloud when the vendors decide on a open data access standard (along with standard data import and export capability) and actually adhere to it. Til then they can keep it. Submitting to vendor lock in is not a very intelligent IT strategy, which means using cloud computing isn't an intelligent IT strategy if it involves development.
Sometimes cheap isn't very cheap at all.
You Get What You Pay For (Score:3, Insightful)
``When it comes to support in the cloud, it kind of looks like you might get what you pay for.''
Oh, please. The connection of "you get what you pay for" with support is only used to discredit whatever technology the speaker doesn't happen to like.
There are free products with great support just as there are expensive products with crappy or nonexistent support. The phrase "you get what you pay for" was widely used to discredit open-source software, but it turns out that such software is now actually preferred over commercial software in many instances. And you often get quite a lot of support that you didn't pay for if you browse the fora.
"When it comes to support, you get what you pay for" is a cheap, meaningless slingshot.
There are real disadvantages to cloud computing, but bad support isn't one of them. You get the support that the provider gives you, and that can be great or horrible, regardless of whether they charge for it and regardless of whether or not they provide cloud computing.
Re:"disruptive" (Score:4, Informative)
By definition, a "disruptive" technology is a technology that is going to be laying down a little of the old Schumpeterian creative destruction on somebody's business model and/or existing capital base. For the incumbents, "disruptive"=bad.
However, for everybody else, the incumbents are a bunch of sluggish, reactionary, rent-seeking parasites. Hurting them is an important aspect of progress.
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Re:Disruptive !== Good (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Yet anothjer dirty minded filter (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they are using any "filter" at all is a reason never to use the service.
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