I'm So Glad I Don't Use the Cloud.

[Duke87 1,070]

Hard drives that can store multiple terabytes of data exist and are not hard to come by. Unless you are in the habit of saving your movie collection on your hard drive or something you are not going to run out of space. The quantity of data required for it to become too cumbersome to store locally is met only by companies and organizations, not individuals.

 

It should be no surprise, then, that companies have had central servers since before cloud computing was a "thing".

[blade2k5 1,523]

The same principle holds true for individuals with a lot of data. The more data, the less useful it is to use physical back up methods. At some point that simply becomes to expensive and time consuming.  

 

Naw, takes me about 10 minutes to burn a data disk that holds 4.7gb.  And the blank disks are a dime a dozen these days, so it's not very expensive at all.  Granted, some people have decrepit old machines that are slow and sluggish and doing something like this is time consuming, but I have a home built pc that is now six years old and it'll burn a data disk in the time frame mentioned above.

[NMUSpidey 3,956]

My crummy old laptop took hours to burn the data DVDs I asked it to, but it's been dying for a long time anyways.

 

I distrust the cloud for many of the same reasons Duke does.  I don't need everything right here right now when I demand it no questions asked.  I also don't really have a job where the cloud would come in handy, and I don't do anything at home or in my hobby that would make the cloud useful.  I mean, if it's really so urgent that a guy can't wait until I get back to my laptop for something given my set of circumstances, then there's something seriously wrong with him and he needs to chill out.  Looking at some of this technology and the way some people act about it, I think to myself, "How in the world did anyone survive before this?  How did I make it all the way through school and most of college without even a cell phone to my name??  What did my parents do in the Dark Ages of the 60s and 70s???"

 

The cloud appears to me to be overrated and more easily compromised than alternatives.  There are not nearly enough plusses for me to trust it over my current setup.  I don't look down on people who use it, it's up to each of us to make decisions for ourselves, but I don't trust it, and I won't for some time.  Get off my lawn.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Amen.

 

However, the turned-on generation is about three or four later than me. Some of us can imagine doing without all these bits of electronic spider webs because we didn't have any of it when we were young. We only had radio, and that was relatively new.

 

If it hadn't been for a couple of guys at Bell Labs, the rest would not have happened. -- They invented the transistor and the rest all grew out of that. Before that it was vacuum tubes.

 

I doubt there are few around now who ever saw an IBM 705 which was all tubes. It was so hot inside the skins that if the power went off the first thing the operators had to do was open all the doors to prevent the tubes from melting in the residual heat. The UNIVAC I had a big cold water coil running down the middle of the system enclosure. If there was a power fail, the operators had to mop the floor of this enclosure to pick up condensation puddle before they could apply the power.

 

Interesting to note that the very first home radios used solid state methods to detect the signals. These used crystals of galena (lead sulfide) and a whisker contact. Later on, detectors with vacuum tubes were found to be better. Crystal sets were really for the radio enthusiasts because the signals retrieved were almost inaudible. So there is nothing new about your fancy solid state radio, it's just that better materials have been found. Let us give thanks to Drs. Einstein and Schrodinger for our present electronic age.

 

And let's not forget good old Ecclesiastes: "There is nothing new under the sun."

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Eh, I don't think I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage when I can make a one time investment to an EHD.

$90 AU for one terabyte drive, too easy.

[Larks2242 251]

True, but if I need to, I can unplug my disk and take it with me.  Mobile computing is going to be the curse of this century.

 

Why don't you just use a Wi-Drive for your cell phone?

 

You can get an app on your phone that accesses it.

 

Like this one http://www.ctistore.com/catalog/cat/prod,378753.html?gclid=COyd4duGlbYCFQdU4AodyS8A4g

 

Works well for me.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

What cell phone?  I haven't had one since I stopped working 50 Km from home.  One of the problems of this age is that people assume that the next guy has everything he has because he can't imagine people not having all his consumer madness.

[Jazzmaster 716]

I'm not a fan of cloud anything, including streaming.

 

Sort of off-topic, but speaking of cloud storage, I'll never understand the appeal of Spotify or any music streaming, at least not as a direct replacement for media players which require local libraries.  Call me old fashioned, but I like having my music on my computer to listen to when I want to, without restrictions.  And if I'm going to pay a monthly fee for music, I think it's fair that I get to listen to that music when I want to.  No questions asked, and no silly ads.

[hym 358]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I do believe if that if you are paying for the service, Spotify lets you listen to your music when you went, where you want, with no ads.

[Duke87 1,070]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I do believe if that if you are paying for the service, Spotify lets you listen to your music when you went, where you want, with no ads.

 

Until the record label that owns the copyright on a bunch of your songs decides to terminate their contract with Spotify and they all suddenly become unavailable.

 

This is why I am sticking with local storage: things on the internet are perishable, but nobody can take what is stored on my hard drive away from me without doing something highly illegal (either physically stealing it or infecting it with a virus - and that's why you keep backups).

[hym 358]

If you're willing to pony up the $10/month price for the premium service, you get download rights too.

[Larks2242 251]

What cell phone?  I haven't had one since I stopped working 50 Km from home.  One of the problems of this age is that people assume that the next guy has everything he has because he can't imagine people not having all his consumer madness.

 

Oh.... yeah I figured everyone had it cause i'd be lost without mine, I use it for everything.

 

There are so many useful things on it, Like for example I don't even go to restaurants without reading the review on my phone anymore.

[LexusInfernus 908]

Meh, I prefer a physical copy of my cd's. Besides, I happen to enjoy relatively obscure bands. Spotify does not have them, or their collection is often incomplete. 

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

There are so many useful things on it, Like for example I don't even go to restaurants without reading the review on my phone anymore.

But you have to remember, that well... people are idiots at times. for example at my local pizza place, there is an entry complaining that it took an hour and a half for their pizza to be delivered, but the shop DOESN'T DO DELIVERY!

 

[Duke87 1,070]

But you have to remember, that well... people are idiots at times. for example at my local pizza place, there is an entry complaining that it took an hour and a half for their pizza to be delivered, but the shop DOESN'T DO DELIVERY!

 

Ah yes, online reviews...

 

 

 

 

Personally, I rarely look at reviews before trying a new restaurant. I feel like that spoils the fun of experimenting. Besides, other people's opinions may not be similar to mine. Just because most other people liked or didn't like something doesn't mean I will think the same.

[Larks2242 251]

There are so many useful things on it, Like for example I don't even go to restaurants without reading the review on my phone anymore.

But you have to remember, that well... people are idiots at times. for example at my local pizza place, there is an entry complaining that it took an hour and a half for their pizza to be delivered, but the shop DOESN'T DO DELIVERY!

 

 

Well I ignore those types of things, what I look for is consistency, If you get 20 people saying it sucked then they can't all be idiots.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

Also you have to look at the dates. If a restaurant was poor and people complained 2 years ago, but it turned itself around and now gets good reviews, it will still look overall average.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

As far as restaurants go, the Internet is a trap and may well put a good place out of business because of a dip in quality since corrected.  Going to a restaurant you've never been to before is an adventure.  Plebeian reviews are often biased.  You may or may not find the place is to your taste.

 

Too many people place too much faith in the unedited junk on the Internet.  Wake up and go out and take chance once in a while.  Go have a look at the SC4 General Discussion and see the increasing number of people who are asking for information about the game after they've loaded it up, but haven't really played it.  There is too much tip-toeing around and not enough "I wonder what happens if I ...", and try it. 

 

Computers don't bite, and they have no opinions either.  People are becoming wary of their machines because something they might input might spoil it.  Nothing you do in user mode on any machine can do any real harm except, perhaps, to people who deliberately damage their own file system.  It is very hard to carelessly damage your refrigerator, and the same applied to your home computer.  However, connecting to some unknown storage or retrieval system is truly a matter of caveat emptor.

[blade2k5 1,523]

Eh, I don't think I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage when I can make a one time investment to an EHD.

$90 AU for one terabyte drive, too easy.

 

Where did you purchase your EHD?  I paid 49.99 for a 2-TB EHD a couple of years ago at an electronic outlet in Wausau WI. of which I can't remember the name of.  Paying nearly twice that much for half the storage space smacks of ripping off the consumer.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

Eh, I don't think I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage when I can make a one time investment to an EHD.

$90 AU for one terabyte drive, too easy.

 

Where did you purchase your EHD?  I paid 49.99 for a 2-TB EHD a couple of years ago at an electronic outlet in Wausau WI. of which I can't remember the name of.  Paying nearly twice that much for half the storage space smacks of ripping off the consumer.

Well, antipodean prices seem to be inflated to a certain extent, eh?  I think I paid around the same for my 1 TB drive about two years ago.

[HarvestSimCity 5]

Interesting to know about this. Therefore, I use Amazon S3 for everything and it works well and they are more secure if you know how to setup somehow. Just my 2 cents

[Duke87 1,070]

Eh, I don't think I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage when I can make a one time investment to an EHD.

$90 AU for one terabyte drive, too easy.

 

Where did you purchase your EHD?  I paid 49.99 for a 2-TB EHD a couple of years ago at an electronic outlet in Wausau WI. of which I can't remember the name of.  Paying nearly twice that much for half the storage space smacks of ripping off the consumer.

 

For Australia, $90 is not a bad price. Computer and gadget related things are considerably more expensive there across the board. Here's an article which discusses this. Here's another.

 

It seems is simply more expensive to make and distribute things in Australia than it is in Europe and the US where there are more people and they live closer together. After all, Australia is 78% of the size of the US with 7% of the population. Lotsa empty nowhere to distribute things across.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

The problem with goods like computer equipment is the universe of discourse in any given country for the manufacturing/import and sales.  The overheads don't get spread quite so thin where there is smaller population.  Consider it a price of living in a country where one can still breathe the air.

[ROFLyoshi 1,760]

 

Eh, I don't think I would be happy to pay a monthly fee for cloud storage when I can make a one time investment to an EHD.

$90 AU for one terabyte drive, too easy.

 

Where did you purchase your EHD?  I paid 49.99 for a 2-TB EHD a couple of years ago at an electronic outlet in Wausau WI. of which I can't remember the name of.  Paying nearly twice that much for half the storage space smacks of ripping off the consumer.

 

For Australia, $90 is not a bad price. Computer and gadget related things are considerably more expensive there across the board. Here's an article which discusses this. Here's another.

 

It seems is simply more expensive to make and distribute things in Australia than it is in Europe and the US where there are more people and they live closer together. After all, Australia is 78% of the size of the US with 7% of the population. Lotsa empty nowhere to distribute things across.

...yep. For example, the new Sim City came out on release at $100, although the price is now $60.

Generally the cost of living is so much higher here though. Things are pricey; you might pay up to $8 for a beer at a restaurant or $25+ for a main meal. However wages are high too, so that offsets it a little.

with the very high dollar buying $1.05US at the moment, it makes so much sense to import.

[blade2k5 1,523]

..yep. For example, the new Sim City came out on release at $100, although the price is now $60.

Generally the cost of living is so much higher here though. Things are pricey; you might pay up to $8 for a beer at a restaurant or $25+ for a main meal. However wages are high too, so that offsets it a little.

with the very high dollar buying $1.05US at the moment, it makes so much sense to import.

 

For some reason I thought you lived in the U.S.  Don't know where that idea came from but I probably had you mixed up with someone else.

[Larks2242 251]

..yep. For example, the new Sim City came out on release at $100, although the price is now $60.

Generally the cost of living is so much higher here though. Things are pricey; you might pay up to $8 for a beer at a restaurant or $25+ for a main meal. However wages are high too, so that offsets it a little.

with the very high dollar buying $1.05US at the moment, it makes so much sense to import.

 

For some reason I thought you lived in the U.S.  Don't know where that idea came from but I probably had you mixed up with someone else.

 

Probably because there is another Yoshi that lives in the US that goes by the name yoshisland.