Re: Megaupload.com seized

[Donald Eastlake <d3e3e3 () gmail com>]

I have always had a certain fondness for paper.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 155 Beaver Street, Milford, MA 01757 USA
 d3e3e3 () gmail com

On Sat, Jan 21, 2012 at 3:19 PM, George Bonser <gbonser () seven com> wrote:
> > Sure, but balance that with podunk.usa's possibly incompetent IT staff?
> > It costs a lot of money to run a state of the art shop, but only
> > incrementally more as you add more and more instances of essentially
> > identical shops. I guess I have more trust that Google is going to get
> > the redundancy, etc right than your average IT operation.
> >
> > Now whether you should *trust* Google with all of that information from
> > a security standpoint is another kettle of fish.
> >
> > Mike
>
> I agree, Mike.  Problem is that the communications infrastructure that enables these sorts of options is generally so 
> reliable people don't think about what will happen if something happens between them and their data that takes out 
> their access to those services.  Imagine a situation where several municipal governments in, say, Santa Cruz County, 
> California are using such services and there is a repeat of the Loma Prieta quake.  Their data survives in Santa 
> Clara county, their city offices survive but there is considerable damage to infrastructure and structures in their 
> jurisdiction.  But the communications is cut off between them and their data and time to repair is unknown.  The city 
> is now without email service.  Employees in one department can't communicate with other departments.  Access to their 
> files is gone.  They can't get the maps that show where those gas lines are.  The local file server that had all that 
> information was retired after the documents were transferred to "the cloud" and the same happened to the local mail 
> server.  At this point they are "flying blind" or relying on people's memories or maybe a scattering of documents 
> people had printed out or saved local copies of.  It's going to be a mess.
>
> The point is that "the cloud" seems like a great option but it relies on being able to reach that "cloud".  Your data 
> may be safe and sound and your office may have survived without much wear, but if something happens in between, you 
> might be sunk.  And out in "Podunk", there aren't often multiple paths.  You are stuck with what you get.
>
> Or your cloud provider might announce they are going out of that business next week.