This seems interesting…taking it for a test drive. I for one am relatively happy to be assimilated by the Google Overlords. Five GB of free storage.
What do you think? 
I currently have 25gb of free storage on Dropbox. So for me, it’s a question of why would I use this instead of Dropbox?
True. It is a nifty little cloud service. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it. I did upload some pictures.
The difference between Dropbox and GoogleDrive is that Google says they can use your stored info any way they want. I’ll stick with Dropbox.
I look at data storage in the same way I look at money. Everybody uses banks. Not because you have to, but because you’ve been convinced to. I prefer to manage my own money. I don’t like the idea of somebody else with their hands on my personal wealth.
In the age of cheap external hard drives, why would you want to store data with another company you know nothing about other than what they’ve told you? You should at least encrypt it first. Google is definitely a part of big brother and you need to keep that in mind before you sign on the dotted line and sell your soul to them.
x
[quote=“DHCollins”]I look at data storage in the same way I look at money. Everybody uses banks. Not because you have to, but because you’ve been convinced to. I prefer to manage my own money. I don’t like the idea of somebody else with their hands on my personal wealth.
In the age of cheap external hard drives, why would you want to store data with another company you know nothing about other than what they’ve told you? You should at least encrypt it first. Google is definitely a part of big brother and you need to keep that in mind before you sign on the dotted line and sell your soul to them.
x[/quote]
I fully agree with you on this one.
Wrong,
Updated at 8 p.m. to clarify that the first sentence of the Google terms states: “You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.” For more on this topic, See Rafe Needlemen’s FAQ.
Am I the only one who sees the pitfalls in cloud computing? I have to admit, for a few small services such as email and uploading it’s good. But mass cloud-computing threatens our very foundations of freedom of usage of technology.
Remember when Xerox had a grip on the world and when the only place you could find a photocopier (albeit probably because of price) was in a store?
By moving and being a proponent of cloud computing we threaten many facets of consumer computing including freedom of access to our private information, privacy of our data, information of access to our data by an authority, resale of our IP and information and data to external entities. I believe cloud computing threatens research and development of newer, faster technologies to handle localized data storage and computation of varying types of data by, in a single stroke (in later stages when cloud computing is more mature and companies are transitioned to this type of service) developing applications that exist to simply take and send data of varying types to data centers, process and store data there and send results back to the user. By offsetting the need for localized computer speed and storage we would effectively rely on clouds of data centers to do the processing for us. I also observe that it could threaten manufacturer’s workforces and all manners of IT related workforces in that the workforces would then only be required to maintain data centers and perhaps manufacturing.
Sounds Orwellian doesn’t it? But everyday I see more and more cloud based services and most people think it’s a great thing! I don’t see it that way. I see it as a measure of control (in the future) to gut world economy’s manufacturing capabilities (protected foreign IP / trade embargo’s or non-compliance to sell technology by prohibition or inflated pricing), free-access and denial of access (user) to data as stated by the company’s EULA (which nobody would read) and the threat of too much “snooping.”
And it all ties in with a $150 netbook with no DVD burner. Repair it? Why? It lasted 6 months. Buy a new one. Aww, too bad you couldn’t offload it to optical disc before your HDD crapped the bed. Boo hoo…Who cares…Facebook has all my photo’s. Heaven forbid you have someone in your family that dressed up as Osama for Halloween and the CIA Green Room tech notices it.
Just my ¢2.
Like with everything cloud computing has its use cases and it pretty much ends its usefulness when you need to do something important like host medical records or various other critical services.
I could see the government setting up its own “cloud” service for that kind of thing and im sure they already have. Lets be real cloud computing is nothing more than virtualized scalable (up and down) computational power/storage/services with someone else managing the hardware and in some cases the software (gmail). It’s been around for years and is nothing new or spectacular it just has a shiny new marketing name.
Personally I store my data myself on a NAS I built, I have my own email server for stuff I want to be semi private, but I dont really worry about my online privacy when using “cloud services” like gmail, facebook etc. If I put it out there I do so with the knowledge its public.
/rant
cliffs:
1)the cloud is old
2) there is no privacy on the net see the movie.
3) The cloud is not going to end other computer services.
[quote=“jesus”]Like with everything cloud computing has its use cases and it pretty much ends its usefulness when you need to do something important like host medical records or various other critical services.
I could see the government setting up its own “cloud” service for that kind of thing and im sure they already have. Lets be real cloud computing is nothing more than virtualized scalable (up and down) computational power/storage/services with someone else managing the hardware and in some cases the software (gmail). It’s been around for years and is nothing new or spectacular it just has a shiny new marketing name.
Personally I store my data myself on a NAS I built, I have my own email server for stuff I want to be semi private, but I dont really worry about my online privacy when using “cloud services” like gmail, facebook etc. If I put it out there I do so with the knowledge its public.
/rant
cliffs:
1)the cloud is old
2) there is no privacy on the net see the movie.
3) The cloud is not going to end other computer services.[/quote]
Cloud stuff is stored on these 
thats 192 600gig 15k SAS drives BTW $$$ It makes heat, wasn’t really fun to stand behind the unit.
Or these,
[quote=“jase”]
[quote=“jesus”]Like with everything cloud computing has its use cases and it pretty much ends its usefulness when you need to do something important like host medical records or various other critical services.
I could see the government setting up its own “cloud” service for that kind of thing and im sure they already have. Lets be real cloud computing is nothing more than virtualized scalable (up and down) computational power/storage/services with someone else managing the hardware and in some cases the software (gmail). It’s been around for years and is nothing new or spectacular it just has a shiny new marketing name.
Personally I store my data myself on a NAS I built, I have my own email server for stuff I want to be semi private, but I dont really worry about my online privacy when using “cloud services” like gmail, facebook etc. If I put it out there I do so with the knowledge its public.
/rant
cliffs:
1)the cloud is old
2) there is no privacy on the net see the movie.
3) The cloud is not going to end other computer services.[/quote]
Cloud stuff is stored on these thats 192 600gig 15k SAS drives BTW $$$ It makes heat, wasn’t really fun to stand behind the unit.
Or these,
“cloud” stuff is stored on just about anything 
but that is some nice equipment. The last setup I worked on like that was about 750K. I still have nightmares about the shitty tape exchanger they bought that ate half of the backup tapes it tried to change. Drove me nuts.
yeah some of this stuff is WELL WELL over 750k !
Got to see some 512gig SSD Enterprise 3.5" drives at $7000 EACH
I have to support lots of emc stuff now, have a VNX system to install at the hospital Tuesday at 9am.