The need to pay for online data backups?

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mptfan
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The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by mptfan »

There has been some discussion on this forum lately about online backup providers to backup your data online, using services like Mozy or Carbonite or DropBox or CrashPlan, and I wanted to start a new thread to give my thoughts on the subject.

I think the world of computing is going through a paradigm shift as we speak. (I know it's a cliche) Under the old paradigm, you have a primary computer where you store all of your programs and files on a hard drive or other local storage devices, and you back up your data onto another storage device like an external hard drive, thumb drives, or CDs, or, you pay an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite or DropBox to backup your files.

Under the new paradigm, you do not rely on a primary computer to store your files or your programs because they are stored "in the cloud" (I know, another cliche) and you can access your files from any computer, or for that matter, any smartphone or tablet or similar device with an internet connection. With this paradigm, you are using your computer as an internet portal to access your programs and files on remote servers. Although the files might be synced to your computer hard drive, it really doesn't matter if your hard drive fails or your computer crashes because you can access your files from any computer or internet device. The best example of this paradigm is google docs, google drive, and google apps, which allow you to create and store documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and other types of documents without having either the program or the data stored on your computer. Thus, there is simply no need to pay for any online backup providers.

In general, older people are operating under the old paradigm, while younger people are shifting away quite rapidly to the new paradigm.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by mackstann »

The world is moving toward doing more things in the "cloud". That's certainly true. But I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion of saying that it will be free. If storing backups costs money, then why would storing ALL of your stuff not cost money? My wife has like 80GB of photos. No one will let her upload them all for free. (Best deal we came up with was BackBlaze which is $5/mo with no set limit.)
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mptfan
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by mptfan »

mackstann wrote:The world is moving toward doing more things in the "cloud". That's certainly true. But I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion of saying that it will be free.
I did not conclude that it will be free.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by mackstann »

mptfan wrote:
mackstann wrote:The world is moving toward doing more things in the "cloud". That's certainly true. But I don't understand how you arrive at the conclusion of saying that it will be free.
I did not conclude that it will be free.
Ah, fair enough. I mis-interpreted.
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magellan
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by magellan »

mptfan wrote:Thus, there is simply no need to pay for any online backup providers.
...
In general, older people are operating under the old paradigm, while younger people are shifting away quite rapidly to the new paradigm.
Maybe it's because older people are a little smarter about these things :wink:

Certainly, a paradigm shift is underway that's pushing lots of information that was formerly stored on our hard drives into the cloud. Things are moving fast, and IMO, sometimes a little too fast.

The concerns about security and privacy have probably been covered pretty well already, so I'll leave those alone and focus on other problems you can run into with an over dependence on 'the cloud' for archival storage.

First, consider email - I'm a big fan of gmail and I use it for all of my email activity. I've got 5 or 6 email accounts that all flow through my gmail account. Still, I don't trust gmail to keep my email archives safe. That would be unwise. If you google 'lost all my gmail email' you'll see why. All it takes is someone getting control of your gmail password, and your entire gmail history could be toast. So to protect my data, I make personal backups of my entire gmail archive. This also means my email archives are under my control, not just Google's.

In general, cloud advocates ignore or downplay the serious drawbacks of handing control of your data to someone else. Information that's stored on your HDD is under your control, information that's stored in the cloud, it is NOT under your control. The ramifications of this are huge.

As an example, say you've used TurboTax online for years. One year you decide you want to change. Under the old paradigm, you installed the new software and pointed it at your prior year's turbotax data file, which the competitor gladly imported so tax history continuity could be maintained. My guess is that Intuit is unlikely to send you a copy of your historical tax return data from their cloud server to help you migrate to a competitor. Sure, maybe they'll let you print some pdf copies, but those generally don't import very well, and even if they did, they'd be incomplete.

Jim
Last edited by magellan on Mon Jun 11, 2012 7:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by prudent »

I prefer to safeguard my own data rather than hope someone else is doing it right. I work in tech, and I don't accept that online backups are as secure as they want you to believe, or ever will be. Companies spend millions trying to keep their own data secure and it still gets hacked, and I don't believe cloud services are somehow better when it's not even their own data they are storing.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by markpa »

there are many advances and while I'd trust an online provider I'd try to back up to a second competing online provider or to a physical pc.

Google has proven they are a trusted provider. I've read many data recovery post mortems, most of them end up apologizing to a fraction of the affected users for the file losses that couldn't be recovered. Google is different, Google's timeline reads that some users are affected, then many less users, finally a tiny fraction, then none.

"...On Sunday Gmail suffered one of its worst outages in recent history when as many as 500,000 accounts were thought to be offline. The problem was made worse by the fact that some of those accounts were empty when restored. In some instances no access has been granted to users for over 24 hours and counting."


Most companies don't even consider tape anymore and here is a company that knows that cloud is good, RAID/distributed RAID is good, SANs and replication are good, but if everything fails or gets corrupted/erased they have a fallback point on physical tape.

http://www.vmwareinfo.com/2011/03/from- ... ogles.html

http://bandl.typepad.com/bandl/2011/03/ ... gle+Reader

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/02/28/ ... ails-back/
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by hicabob »

Free if you don't mind them poking thru your stuff to see how to target ads to you and I expect they disavow any responsibility to keep it intact. That being said - I use google and yahoo to backup code without payment or problems but I also keep my own backup.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Toons »

"The best example of this paradigm is google docs, google drive"

I am 61,,I wouldn't consider paying for online storage with all the free that is available on the cloud,Google,Amazon,Apple,
5 gigs from each site last time I checked,I use all three.Other than music and videos which require a lot of storage how many people have 20 gigs of data?
I also use an external hard drive and an older desktop that I have for backups via the network.Why pay :moneybag
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by interplanetjanet »

I do pay for online storage, but I do so because I want a business relationship with a provider with a clear SLA. I treat my personal data with the same respect I do with critical data at work, where mirroring across multiple sites and, indeed, continents is frequently necessary. I like being able to pick up a phone or send an email and get an engineer, right now.

I use rsync.net. They're not for everyone and are downright barebones compared to some services that have sprung up, but if you're going to roll your own distributed backup they are an excellent choice. I've used them in B2B relationships to store fairly large amounts of data (near-petabyte range) and have always had excellent service and terrific performance.

-janet
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Muchtolearn »

OP, I am surprised that you think older people are in a different mode. Maybe your family is but not many of us. Older people who are educated and in their 50s and 60s are quite technologically savvy. They may not spend time on facebook or things like that, but certainly understand online storage. Frankly, we have more documents of relevance than younger people.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

Yup, this trend is true, and is 'old news' by now.

Younger folks, who tend to have more of a digitized life, with MP3s, videos, pictures, etc., often prefer cloud computing resources, for all the various reasons. And they're usually well familiar with cloud computing to some degree by now.

Older folks simply often don't even have the data needs of paid-for cloud backup systems or computing. If you only have 1GB of digital videos/pics, there's no reason to pay for unlimited cloud storage when you could just get a free Gdocs or Box.com account to save them in.

I, however, am convinced that cloud storage backup system are here to stay, and are a huge upgrade over what people did in the past for backups. You might feel secure mentally having various local hard drive copies of your data, but one fire or other catastrophe, and all your data is at risk. Even storing offsite physical drives is limited - works great for long term archival stuff, but doesn't do anything for the most active file you were working on. Backup systems like Crashplan, Mozy, etc., make this trivial - it backs up automatically, in the background, and gives you solid protection for a mere $50/year or less. Anyone who has lost an important file they needed for whatever reason, usually would have gladly paid $50 if not a lot more, for the chance to retrieve that file successfully.

It's actually not likely that in the near future, there will be laptops and tablets that automatically cloud backup everything, without need for 3rd party payment. Apple could get away with this by just rolling it into their product line as long as the cost of data storage keeps dropping like a rock.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by FabLab »

mptfan wrote:There has been some discussion on this forum lately about online backup providers to backup your data online, using services like Mozy or Carbonite or DropBox or CrashPlan, and I wanted to start a new thread to give my thoughts on the subject.

I think the world of computing is going through a paradigm shift as we speak. (I know it's a cliche) Under the old paradigm, you have a primary computer where you store all of your programs and files on a hard drive or other local storage devices, and you back up your data onto another storage device like an external hard drive, thumb drives, or CDs, or, you pay an online backup service like Mozy or Carbonite or DropBox to backup your files.

Under the new paradigm, you do not rely on a primary computer to store your files or your programs because they are stored "in the cloud" (I know, another cliche) and you can access your files from any computer, or for that matter, any smartphone or tablet or similar device with an internet connection.

In general, older people are operating under the old paradigm, while younger people are shifting away quite rapidly to the new paradigm.
Though probably just another one of those "older people," I think I'm getting you and this "new paradigm." So, the device that sits on one's table, PC or whatever, is kinda like an appliance. And it draws whatever power it may have from its ability to access programs, data, information services, etc., from what we now rather vaguely refer to as "the cloud."

That's a great idea. Funny though, there was this company back in the day, that proved integral to the early build out of Internet infrastructure and provisioned servers that led to a rapid proliferation of web sites across that network of connected networks. In fact, its co-founder, who became the face of the company, was so fond of a certain expression (speaking it at conferences and technical meetings wherever he went) that it soon became the firm's motto. The expression: "the network is the computer." The firm was Sun Microsystems, founded by some "older people": Silicon Valley luminaries Vinod Khosla, Andy Bechtolsheim, Bill Joy, and Mr. McNealy.

Cheers
P.S. Lest we forget, the motto was coined in the early to mid-1980s, and it served as a harbinger of a new paradigm.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

Yup, UNIX was the very core of cloud computing, and was so well done that it's still used as the core for Apple OS.

Still, cloud computing in its modern sense is a very different animal from back in those days. Even those the ideas are the same, the execution and usage is so different that you almost can't compare them. (Back in the day, cloud computing was used to optimize CPU time as computers prohibitively expensive to buy, and it was cheaper to have 'terminals' rather than discrete PCs.)
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by interplanetjanet »

lightheir wrote:Yup, UNIX was the very core of cloud computing, and was so well done that it's still used as the core for Apple OS.

Still, cloud computing in its modern sense is a very different animal from back in those days. Even those the ideas are the same, the execution and usage is so different that you almost can't compare them. (Back in the day, cloud computing was used to optimize CPU time as computers prohibitively expensive to buy, and it was cheaper to have 'terminals' rather than discrete PCs.)
I see Sun (for example) and other Unix workstation vendors as having gained their fame and market share by subverting this paradigm. The whole concept of a Unix "workstation" was that you didn't have to be beholden to centralized computational resources to the same degree - rather than having, say, a few VAXen or a mainframe at the core of infrastructure with terminals (both graphical and not) attached at various points, you could have a fully fledged reasonably high-powered Unix system *on your desk*. For not much money (high 4 figures in the late '80s per seat). True, storage and authentication were frequently centralized, but Sun (and to some degree, the other workstation vendors) really smashed the hub and spoke model of enterprise computing that had been present up until that time.

One thing is as true as always - the more things change, the more they stay the same. I expect the balance between local and remote resources to continue to fluctuate based on technology and need.

-janet
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

I agree - although I think the pendulum is going to swing irreversibly toward cloud in the next two decades, before possibly a pullback due to a new paradigm of computing. You give up control by going cloud, but you also get so much convenience. Now that they're even able to stream 3-d video games in realtime, which have usually been considered a very cpu-intensive task requiring local cpu power, the sky' the limit.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by mptfan »

lightheir wrote: It's actually not likely that in the near future, there will be laptops and tablets that automatically cloud backup everything, without need for 3rd party payment.
Actually, you can do that right now. Google Drive offers up to 5G of data storage for free. If you want more storage, you can pay for it, for example, you can get 25G of data for $2.49 per month, with higher prices for more data.

https://support.google.com/drive/bin/an ... a&cbrank=0
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

mptfan wrote:
lightheir wrote: It's actually not likely that in the near future, there will be laptops and tablets that automatically cloud backup everything, without need for 3rd party payment.
Actually, you can do that right now. Google Drive offers up to 5G of data storage for free. If you want more storage, you can pay for it, for example, you can get 25G of data for $2.49 per month, with higher prices for more data.

https://support.google.com/drive/bin/an ... a&cbrank=0
True, but I anticipate that it'll be free basically unlimited cloud storage without even signign up for it in the future, and hard drives will almost become a thing of the past. Sounds a bit weird now, but it's already doable, and with the dropping price of storage and the continued virtualization of computers, it's highly probably that we'll soon all be using 'terminals' as opposed to computers with dedicated hardware like GPUs and hard drives, as you can offload all the processing power and storage to the cloud in real-time with virtually no lag now. (See 3d gaming by Onlive.) I anticipate that they'll be soon selling a Macbook Pro that automatically comes with online storage, more than you can possibly use given upload bandwith limits per month, free and automatically with purchase of one of their high end macs. No need to fuss with Box, Dropbox, google, etc, and our kids will wonder what the heck we were spending our money on with stuff like Crashplan.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

lightheir wrote: ... hard drives will almost become a thing of the past. Sounds a bit weird now, but it's already doable, and with the dropping price of storage and the continued virtualization of computers, it's highly probably that we'll soon all be using 'terminals' as opposed to computers with dedicated hardware like GPUs and hard drives ...
The problem with this argument is that local drives and computing power are getting cheaper faster than communications. The economic incentive is to tilt towards the cheaper resource where it can replace the more expensive one. This means more local storage and CPU power rather less. Now many of the local resources are and will be used to facilitate communications (for caching and compression) but given their existance it makes sense to do many things locally.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by tetractys »

The marketing to store user data online is strong and geared towards those most susceptible to it. Data stored in the cloud is to a large extent controlled by external entities. That data does not have to be directly accessible to those entities to be lucrative to them--there are exploitive workarounds. When the susceptible user's data is controlled, so is the user. -- Tet
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by magellan »

lightheir wrote:No need to fuss with Box, Dropbox, google, etc, and our kids will wonder what the heck we were spending our money on with stuff like Crashplan.
Before you write off Crashplan, consider that the cloud has to solve 100% of the problem to eliminate the need for online backup. Getting 99% of the way there isn't good enough. I agree that for basic computing tasks like email and web browsing, the cloud is already at 100%. You can even throw in basic photo and document editing too. I have an android tablet that I use exactly as you envision. It's just a terminal into the cloud. Maybe this will cover 50% of consumers, or maybe even 90%, but I doubt the number will ever get near 100%.

There will always be an advantage to local cpu and storage for some tasks. A good example today is photo and video processing. The raw data when I do a just-for-fun photo shoot runs around 10-20gig. Given that last-mile bandwidth is basically frozen for the foreseeable future, I don't see heavy photo editing happening over the cloud anytime soon.

As I mentioned before, I'd need cloud vendors to offer a way to switch to competitors in case I want to get my data out. Also, I'd need to convince myself that cloud service providers are competent and trustworthy enough with data security and privacy. I don't even trust Crashplan with this. My operating assumption is that anything I put into the cloud will eventually be compromised somehow. If data security matters, I use truecrypt volumes that are encrypted outside of Crashplan.

My guess is that after more inevitable cloud security blunders, the next generation will wonder what possessed mom or dad to think it was safe and rational to trust the cloud with so much important information.

Jim
Last edited by magellan on Tue Jun 12, 2012 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by tsplinter »

One thing is as true as always - the more things change, the more they stay the same. I expect the balance between local and remote resources to continue to fluctuate based on technology and need.
InternetJanetPlanet nailed it. The dialectic between local and central computing power never ceases to amaze and amuse. The flux between the two will always go on. And the same arguments will be endlessly repeated by those who are infatuated by the latest offering from the localists or the centralists. Both sides are always right and always wrong. I have lived on both sides, and often on both sides at once.

I have investigated cloud computing for my lawfirm. Google has no idea (as yet) how to deal with the e-mail needs of a lawfirm which include maintaining protections for confidentiality of our client's information; access to years of past communications; ability to implement both e-mail retention and destruction. Cloud; schmowd! What a joke. Microsoft; similar ignorance of real world needs.

I have investigated cloud storage for my home network. It didn't pencil out. It was workable enough if I was willing to scratch my photo, music, and video files or if I was not interested in full backup of the automatic backups my homeserver does of all the pcs in our home (two, mainly, but also a media center pc hooked up to the tv). Once you're up in the terabyte range (which is very easy to reach with the power of local computers), saving it all in the cloud is not really practical.

The Cloud will continue to grow, but it will have stiff competition.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

Epsilon Delta wrote:
lightheir wrote: ... hard drives will almost become a thing of the past. Sounds a bit weird now, but it's already doable, and with the dropping price of storage and the continued virtualization of computers, it's highly probably that we'll soon all be using 'terminals' as opposed to computers with dedicated hardware like GPUs and hard drives ...
The problem with this argument is that local drives and computing power are getting cheaper faster than communications. The economic incentive is to tilt towards the cheaper resource where it can replace the more expensive one. This means more local storage and CPU power rather less. Now many of the local resources are and will be used to facilitate communications (for caching and compression) but given their existance it makes sense to do many things locally.

I see your argument, but in reality, it's not playing out this way at all. Low cost laptops and even tablets have more than enough power to meet the needs of the vast majority of consumers. Consumers are NOT choosing computers any more because they have the fastest processor or biggest hard drive. In fact, the trend of what consumers are buying are the complete opposite - migrating hugely toward web-oriented lightweight computers. It may be hard for us to imagine now, but it's absolutely reality that within a decade, we will have full fledged web-only devices that work very well (not like the clunky Google laptop today) with basically no hard drive and a weak cpu. Heck, tablets are almost entirely there, and it's the fastest growing segment of computers already. We might feel that our video and big files/etc are immune to cloud virtualization, but that's exactly what a lot of folks said about most of the things that are now routine with both computers and the internet.

I don't think cloud computing is the be-all-end-all of everything, but there will absolutely be a huge paradigm shift toward them and away from our current local paradigm.

I still remember the days when everyone looked at online banking and electronic bank transactions with huge suspicion. Now it's widely accepted that banks handle finanical transactions internally and externally competently. It also strikes me as hypocritical that a lot of folks who refuse to store any of their information on cloud systems of any sort due to 'inevitable security breaches' are comfortable holding large retirement and personal bank accounts with major banks - which all use electronic 'cloud' systems to keep track of your money. If you're so hung up on security breaches online that you won't put any of your files there at all, you should take a long hard look at why you aren't pulling all your money from any bank that uses electronic record system keeping, even if it's meeting accounting standards with double-entry bookkeeping.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Sidney »

lightheir wrote: It also strikes me as hypocritical that a lot of folks who refuse to store any of their information on cloud systems of any sort due to 'inevitable security breaches' are comfortable holding large retirement and personal bank accounts with major banks - which all use electronic 'cloud' systems to keep track of your money. If you're so hung up on security breaches online that you won't put any of your files there at all, you should take a long hard look at why you aren't pulling all your money from any bank that uses electronic record system keeping, even if it's meeting accounting standards with double-entry bookkeeping.
But nobody in their right mind relies solely on the institutions records. That is why what transaction registers and bank recs are all about.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

Sidney wrote:
lightheir wrote: It also strikes me as hypocritical that a lot of folks who refuse to store any of their information on cloud systems of any sort due to 'inevitable security breaches' are comfortable holding large retirement and personal bank accounts with major banks - which all use electronic 'cloud' systems to keep track of your money. If you're so hung up on security breaches online that you won't put any of your files there at all, you should take a long hard look at why you aren't pulling all your money from any bank that uses electronic record system keeping, even if it's meeting accounting standards with double-entry bookkeeping.
But nobody in their right mind relies solely on the institutions records. That is why what transaction registers and bank recs are all about.
I'll bet the bank, if challenged, would first consider their records above your own personal copies of the registers etc.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Sidney »

lightheir wrote:I'll bet the bank, if challenged, would first consider their records above your own personal copies of the registers etc.
The purpose of the register isn't to act as proof. It is to act as your compilation of the truth, to be backed up by transaction confirmations (e.g. deposit slips). The whole purpose of a monthly bank rec is to force you to reconcile your version of the truth with the bank's version of the truth (monthly statement).

I don't rely on the bank statement as the sole truth any more than I would rely on a brokerage to track my cost basis. It is my money, not theirs. They don't have the same motivation for accuracy that I do. Banks do make mistakes. I have no doubt that VG makes mistakes in its record-keeping as well.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by jebmke »

Reconciliation is a lost art. Before I retired I ran a large accounting and finance organization. We regularly recruited entry level accounting types (some with CPAs). After the regular round of interviews we would sit each one down with a cash sub-ledger and a folder of bank statements and have them do a bank reconciliation. It is surprising how many of them, including CPAs could not do this.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

jebmke wrote:Reconciliation is a lost art. Before I retired I ran a large accounting and finance organization. We regularly recruited entry level accounting types (some with CPAs). After the regular round of interviews we would sit each one down with a cash sub-ledger and a folder of bank statements and have them do a bank reconciliation. It is surprising how many of them, including CPAs could not do this.
Banks are actively hostile to reconciliation.

Many years ago my statement was a simple chronological list of my transactions with columns for the date, description, amount and account balance. This was logical and simple to use. In the name of "customer service" my bank changed the format to provide separate sections for deposits, checks, electronic transfers etc. The daily balances were shown only in a separate section that was formatted in multiple columns and not sorted by date! I went to the 6 other banks/CU in town and asked to see a sample statement, explained what I wanted and said they would get my business if they could provide it. None of them could.

Despite the banks best efforts I routinely find a couple of errors a year. I always notify the bank. If the error was in the banks favor it usually takes four or five contacts with the bank to get it fixed. I am not so persistent if the error is in my favor and these are rarely fixed.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by Epsilon Delta »

lightheir wrote:
Epsilon Delta wrote:
lightheir wrote: ... hard drives will almost become a thing of the past. Sounds a bit weird now, but it's already doable, and with the dropping price of storage and the continued virtualization of computers, it's highly probably that we'll soon all be using 'terminals' as opposed to computers with dedicated hardware like GPUs and hard drives ...
The problem with this argument is that local drives and computing power are getting cheaper faster than communications. The economic incentive is to tilt towards the cheaper resource where it can replace the more expensive one. This means more local storage and CPU power rather less. Now many of the local resources are and will be used to facilitate communications (for caching and compression) but given their existance it makes sense to do many things locally.

I see your argument, but in reality, it's not playing out this way at all. Low cost laptops and even tablets have more than enough power to meet the needs of the vast majority of consumers. Consumers are NOT choosing computers any more because they have the fastest processor or biggest hard drive. In fact, the trend of what consumers are buying are the complete opposite - migrating hugely toward web-oriented lightweight computers. It may be hard for us to imagine now, but it's absolutely reality that within a decade, we will have full fledged web-only devices that work very well (not like the clunky Google laptop today) with basically no hard drive and a weak cpu. Heck, tablets are almost entirely there, and it's the fastest growing segment of computers already. We might feel that our video and big files/etc are immune to cloud virtualization, but that's exactly what a lot of folks said about most of the things that are now routine with both computers and the internet.

I don't think cloud computing is the be-all-end-all of everything, but there will absolutely be a huge paradigm shift toward them and away from our current local paradigm.
I don't see any evolution to less powerful devices. In the 1990s the evolution of devices was rapidly increasing power at a fixed price. Now we have slowly increasing power at a rapidly decreasing price. But new devices are still at least as capable as older ones. There was a dip in storage capacity when devices went from discs to solid state, but capacities have been trending up since. I am certain that in 10 years time the device du jour will have quite enough storage and power to run the applications of today. They may not have hard discs, but they will have hundreds of gigabytes of local storage.

There are plenty of people, including most teens, who use wi-fi rather than cellular modems for their mobile devices. Things like the ipod and kindle that only have intermittent communications need local resources and cry out for local apps. Continuous connectivity is enormously expensive and does not add much value for many people.

As for electronic banking, for me it's not a technical issue, it's a business and legal issue. I put my money in the bank so they can guard it, not so the bank can tell me how to guard it. The last time I read a banks terms of service for electronic banking they more or less said that if I used electronic banking the bank was no longer responsible for guarding my money.
Last edited by Epsilon Delta on Wed Jun 13, 2012 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FabLab
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by FabLab »

lightheir wrote: Still, cloud computing in its modern sense is a very different animal from back in those days. Even those the ideas are the same, the execution and usage is so different that you almost can't compare them. (Back in the day, cloud computing was used to optimize CPU time as computers prohibitively expensive to buy, and it was cheaper to have 'terminals' rather than discrete PCs.)
Interesting place you went with that thought, though I would never have characterized the days of a dumb terminal (e.g., IBM 3270) slavishly tethered to the monolithic mainframe as "cloud computing."
The fundamental things apply as time goes by -- Herman Hupfeld
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

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interplanetjanet wrote: I see Sun (for example) and other Unix workstation vendors as having gained their fame and market share by subverting this paradigm. The whole concept of a Unix "workstation" was that you didn't have to be beholden to centralized computational resources to the same degree - rather than having, say, a few VAXen or a mainframe at the core of infrastructure with terminals (both graphical and not) attached at various points, you could have a fully fledged reasonably high-powered Unix system *on your desk*. For not much money (high 4 figures in the late '80s per seat). True, storage and authentication were frequently centralized, but Sun (and to some degree, the other workstation vendors) really smashed the hub and spoke model of enterprise computing that had been present up until that time.

-janet
Hi Janet,

Smashed the hub and spoke model, you bet!

Respectfully, I would add, though, that what Sun was doing was not announcing some internal initiative to manufacture appliances (somewhat akin to dumb terminals) with its advocacy of the slogan, "the network is the computer." Rather, John Gage, Scott McNealy, et al, were envisioning (and this preceded the NSFNET's provisioning and explosive growth in usage), the coming world of distributed computing and networked services accessible via a network of interconnected networks. And, they were staking their claim to providing the workstations, servers, and software that would afford them competitive advantage during the massive build out of Internet infrastructure and beyond.* I wouldn't want to leave the impression that their products were meant to be stand-alone replacements for the previous terminal/mainframe model. They were intended to be heavily networked.

*Bit of disclosure: Some of my most rewarding (fun, too) experiences involved the years spent with the NSFNET and the principal NSF (National Science Foundation) funded/sponsored regional providers to the backbone network. I can tell you that our NICs (Network Information Centers) and NOCs (Network Operations Centers) were chock-a-block with Sun boxes provisioning networks, managing them, and enabling distributed information services.

Best wishes,
FabLab
The fundamental things apply as time goes by -- Herman Hupfeld
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by ianferrel »

If you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer; you're the product.

That's not to say that you should never use a free service. Just that you should realize what you're getting, and what you're giving up. Facebook and Gmail will gladly store your personal information for you and use it for whatever they want. I'm much happier paying $50/year for backup service that will encrypt and not even be capable of looking at my data because I know that the company I buy from (Crashplan. I recommend them) has a financial interest in keeping me as a customer, and no ability to do much else. I'd rather have companies profit by figuring out how to serve me better than by figuring out how to better extract value from the data I'm leaking to them.

Think about all the people who use commissioned salesmen as investment advisors. It seems like a better deal on the surface, but There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Better to hire a for-fee advisor who doesn't have a financial incentive to screw you over.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

No, there is ABSOLUTELY a trend toward lower-powered devices. It is NOT just because computers are more powerful noawadys..

The fastest growing segment of CPUs are tablets, and before that, vastly underpowered netbooks.

Consumers are NOT going in droves to buy the big rack-power beast or those $3k superlaptops with tons of power. While yes, there has been a big improvement in the power specs of even netbooks, we've clearly passed the point of consumer utility for most functions - you simply don't need that insane computing power unless you have very special needs. 95% of consumers are perfectly well served with a netbook or a tablet that shares more commonality with a phone than a desktop computer.

This trend will continue, and cloud computing is absolutely driving a large part of it.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

ianferrel wrote:If you're not paying for a service, you're not the customer; you're the product.

That's not to say that you should never use a free service. Just that you should realize what you're getting, and what you're giving up. Facebook and Gmail will gladly store your personal information for you and use it for whatever they want. I'm much happier paying $50/year for backup service that will encrypt and not even be capable of looking at my data because I know that the company I buy from (Crashplan. I recommend them) has a financial interest in keeping me as a customer, and no ability to do much else. I'd rather have companies profit by figuring out how to serve me better than by figuring out how to better extract value from the data I'm leaking to them.

Think about all the people who use commissioned salesmen as investment advisors. It seems like a better deal on the surface, but There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Better to hire a for-fee advisor who doesn't have a financial incentive to screw you over.

I hear you, but at the same time,just because you are paying for a service does NOT mean that the vendor is necessarily beholden to priovide superior service.

Gmail is free for a lot, but they have a big userbase (including me) that pays happily for extra storage space that's shared between Gmail, Gdocs, etc. I'm not under any illusion whatsoever that because I'm paying , that they're no longer harvesting my data for analysis. I would willingly migrate to a paid mail service that does not harvest info, but there is nothing out there that can rival Gmail's functionality, imo.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but there are also a lot of folks out there who would gladly take your money without any lunch in return regardless.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by interplanetjanet »

lightheir wrote:Consumers are NOT going in droves to buy the big rack-power beast or those $3k superlaptops with tons of power. While yes, there has been a big improvement in the power specs of even netbooks, we've clearly passed the point of consumer utility for most functions - you simply don't need that insane computing power unless you have very special needs. 95% of consumers are perfectly well served with a netbook or a tablet that shares more commonality with a phone than a desktop computer.
I think that the term "consumer" is the magic word here.

Going back a number of years, there was more parity between content consumption and creation. The massive growth in Internet "users" over the past decade has been in users that predominantly consume content rather than create it - this parallels the rise of devices that are optimal for consuming content such as netbooks and tablets. In hindsight it's no surprise, and for the majority of consumers they make perfect sense. I expect content consumption devices to become steadily more pervasive until the lines are more and more blurred with "appliances".

This does not necessarily mean that "everything will go into the cloud". It will depend on what can be feasably done with the technology and needs of the time. I've been wrong about so many things in this business (and have worked deep in it for 20 years, now) that I'm hesitant to make anything approaching a long-term prediction. These are interesting times!

-janet
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

interplanetjanet wrote:
lightheir wrote:Consumers are NOT going in droves to buy the big rack-power beast or those $3k superlaptops with tons of power. While yes, there has been a big improvement in the power specs of even netbooks, we've clearly passed the point of consumer utility for most functions - you simply don't need that insane computing power unless you have very special needs. 95% of consumers are perfectly well served with a netbook or a tablet that shares more commonality with a phone than a desktop computer.
I think that the term "consumer" is the magic word here.

Going back a number of years, there was more parity between content consumption and creation. The massive growth in Internet "users" over the past decade has been in users that predominantly consume content rather than create it - this parallels the rise of devices that are optimal for consuming content such as netbooks and tablets. In hindsight it's no surprise, and for the majority of consumers they make perfect sense. I expect content consumption devices to become steadily more pervasive until the lines are more and more blurred with "appliances".

This does not necessarily mean that "everything will go into the cloud". It will depend on what can be feasably done with the technology and needs of the time. I've been wrong about so many things in this business (and have worked deep in it for 20 years, now) that I'm hesitant to make anything approaching a long-term prediction. These are interesting times!

-janet
Agree that these are exciting times, and yes, consumers are driving a lot of this trend.

Still, I notice the hardware requirements of a lot of startup internet companies in Silicon Valley, and most of them have their employees using no more than a $800 (if even that) laptop to do all their creation, maintenance, and systems administration. Yes, they also have server access, but their employees are not even using high end or remotely powerful laptops to do all of their work, both in and out of house. Yes, this points to the trend that CPU power and storage has dramatically increased (and is still doing so), but also indicates that even many mainstream creators of content have passed a threshold of computing that no longer requires greatly increased CPU or memory for optimal work. (Of course, engineers and CS specialists will continue to use hi-end computer resources.) So even in internet media creation, there is a definite trend toward 'less computer.'

I also can't predict the future, but I can easily envision a reality in less than 15 years where you can do full-bore computing with no performance compromise using nothing but a modern 'terminal.' In fact, that terminal may very well offer more power than even the best personal desktop, if you're using it to tap into industrial-strength cloud computers to do the processing for you.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by magellan »

lightheir wrote:Still, I notice the hardware requirements of a lot of startup internet companies in Silicon Valley, and most of them have their employees using no more than a $800 (if even that) laptop to do all their creation, maintenance, and systems administration. Yes, they also have server access, but their employees are not even using high end or remotely powerful laptops to do all of their work, both in and out of house. Yes, this points to the trend that CPU power and storage has dramatically increased (and is still doing so), but also indicates that even many mainstream creators of content have passed a threshold of computing that no longer requires greatly increased CPU or memory for optimal work. (Of course, engineers and CS specialists will continue to use hi-end computer resources.) So even in internet media creation, there is a definite trend toward 'less computer.'
As a CS type that dabbles in media creation for fun, I think you might have this exactly backwards. For $800 you can get a Dell latitude laptop with an i7-2640M CPU. That's plenty of horsepower for most any professional business user, including a typical software engineer. Spending $1k-2k on faster hardware for these employees wouldn't increase productivity much at all (although when I was in the business, I'd let engineers buy whatever they wanted, as a perk more than anything). OTOH, someone running Adobe CS6 or Final Cut Pro (the tools of content creators), would likely see a significant increase in productivity with a higher-end machine.

Jim
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

magellan wrote:
lightheir wrote:Still, I notice the hardware requirements of a lot of startup internet companies in Silicon Valley, and most of them have their employees using no more than a $800 (if even that) laptop to do all their creation, maintenance, and systems administration. Yes, they also have server access, but their employees are not even using high end or remotely powerful laptops to do all of their work, both in and out of house. Yes, this points to the trend that CPU power and storage has dramatically increased (and is still doing so), but also indicates that even many mainstream creators of content have passed a threshold of computing that no longer requires greatly increased CPU or memory for optimal work. (Of course, engineers and CS specialists will continue to use hi-end computer resources.) So even in internet media creation, there is a definite trend toward 'less computer.'
As a CS type that dabbles in media creation for fun, I think you might have this exactly backwards. For $800 you can get a Dell latitude laptop with an i7-2640M CPU. That's plenty of horsepower for most any professional business user, including a typical software engineer. Spending $1k-2k on faster hardware for these employees wouldn't increase productivity much at all (although when I was in the business, I'd let engineers buy whatever they wanted, as a perk more than anything). OTOH, someone running Adobe CS6 or Final Cut Pro (the tools of content creators), would likely see a significant increase in productivity with a higher-end machine.

Jim
That's the exact point I was making - you just said the exact same thing I did.

THe sub$800 computers have more than enough power for like 90% of users, including content makers and typical software engineers (as you say yourself), while only specialized users like hi-end graphics photoshop gurus or scientists really need high powered $3k+ computers for max productivity.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by magellan »

lightheir wrote:That's the exact point I was making - you just said the exact same thing I did.

The sub$800 computers have more than enough power for like 90% of users, including content makers and typical software engineers (as you say yourself), while only specialized users like hi-end graphics photoshop gurus or scientists really need high powered $3k+ computers for max productivity.
I think we partly agree, but we're also talking past each other too. I was mostly responding to your comments that "employees are not even using high end or remotely powerful laptops to do all of their work" and there's "a definite trend toward 'less computer.'

I think the opposite is happening - even the lowest performing machines are incredibly powerful. There's always a price point where you get the most bang for your buck and that's where corporate buyers tend to buy. In 2005, the business laptop sweet spot was around $2k. By 2009, it had dropped to around $1200. Now it seems to be around $800. I don't think anything has really changed except that the entire price/performance curve continues to shift down. Low-end consumer grade computers with i3 processors now cost only $300-500, and are incredibly powerful compared to top-end machines of just a few years ago. So IMO, companies choosing an $800 laptop with an i7 processor are at roughly the same point on the price/performance curve as they've always been. They're certainly not dumbing down employee machines because they need less cpu horsepower.

In fact, I'd argue that it's the high performance of today's low-end to mid-range cpus that makes cloud computing even possible. In general, the cloud model is incredibly inefficient. In addition to network overhead, it requires enormous cpu horsepower on both the client side and the server side because of the extra work that comes from a distributed solution. With most cloud applications, a decent chunk of the application's code actually runs in users' browsers. This is the key to getting a cloud application to scale well and offer good response times. It's not like client machines running cloud apps are just dumb display terminals getting fed screen images. They're usually running a good part of the application's code right inside their own browsers.

So the way I see it, more powerful end-user machines enable more and more applications to overcome the inefficiency of using a cloud model. Maybe we're saying the same thing, but just disagree on the extent to which it's the high performance of today's consumer machines (including tablets, etc) that makes all this possible.

Jim
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by lightheir »

magellan wrote:
lightheir wrote:That's the exact point I was making - you just said the exact same thing I did.

The sub$800 computers have more than enough power for like 90% of users, including content makers and typical software engineers (as you say yourself), while only specialized users like hi-end graphics photoshop gurus or scientists really need high powered $3k+ computers for max productivity.
I think we partly agree, but we're also talking past each other too. I was mostly responding to your comments that "employees are not even using high end or remotely powerful laptops to do all of their work" and there's "a definite trend toward 'less computer.'

I think the opposite is happening - even the lowest performing machines are incredibly powerful. There's always a price point where you get the most bang for your buck and that's where corporate buyers tend to buy. In 2005, the business laptop sweet spot was around $2k. By 2009, it had dropped to around $1200. Now it seems to be around $800. I don't think anything has really changed except that the entire price/performance curve continues to shift down. Low-end consumer grade computers with i3 processors now cost only $300-500, and are incredibly powerful compared to top-end machines of just a few years ago. So IMO, companies choosing an $800 laptop with an i7 processor are at roughly the same point on the price/performance curve as they've always been. They're certainly not dumbing down employee machines because they need less cpu horsepower.

In fact, I'd argue that it's the high performance of today's low-end to mid-range cpus that makes cloud computing even possible. In general, the cloud model is incredibly inefficient. In addition to network overhead, it requires enormous cpu horsepower on both the client side and the server side because of the extra work that comes from a distributed solution. With most cloud applications, a decent chunk of the application's code actually runs in users' browsers. This is the key to getting a cloud application to scale well and offer good response times. It's not like client machines running cloud apps are just dumb display terminals getting fed screen images. They're usually running a good part of the application's code right inside their own browsers.

So the way I see it, more powerful end-user machines enable more and more applications to overcome the inefficiency of using a cloud model. Maybe we're saying the same thing, but just disagree on the extent to which it's the high performance of today's consumer machines (including tablets, etc) that makes all this possible.

Jim
Yes, we do agree. I do agree that the cloud computing has been largely facilitated by the overall increased power of computers, allowing a $300 netbook to competently run 99% of programs out there.

Still, the overarching point that we both agree on is that we're well past the computing threshold where not just consumers, but even content creators need more power in their computers.

And while your quote " more powerful end-user machines enable more and more applications to overcome the inefficiency of using a cloud model" is certainly true today, my belief in the continued truth of this statement has recently been shaken to its core when I saw how effective the OnLive gaming service works. I'm not a diehard gamer, but I and most folks always believed that 3d gaming was a domain that would ALWAYS stay on a local CPU, as you usually need a powerful graphics card with dedicated separate gigs of memory just to get playable framerates and resolution. But when I saw that using Onlive, with a regular internet connection and a friggin' netbook with no graphics card, you can play the most modern 3d games, in HD resolution with maximum GPU effects (which would otherwise require a separate $300+ graphics card on a tower CPU), in makes it abundantly clear that the cloud is a lot more powerful than I thought, and is in fact perfectly capable of replacing some of the most hardware-intensive local software that I thought would never be offloaded to the cloud.
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by MidnightX »

tsplinter wrote:
I have investigated cloud computing for my lawfirm. Google has no idea (as yet) how to deal with the e-mail needs of a lawfirm which include maintaining protections for confidentiality of our client's information; access to years of past communications; ability to implement both e-mail retention and destruction. Cloud; schmowd! What a joke. Microsoft; similar ignorance of real world needs.

I have investigated cloud storage for my home network.... Once you're up in the terabyte range (which is very easy to reach with the power of local computers), saving it all in the cloud is not really practical.
I work at Biglaw and all our data and email is uploaded through NetDocuments (NetDocs). Admittedly, it's not perfect, but the cloud functionality has resolved the bottleneck experienced using a network with well over 1,500 people saving, searching, retrieving, etc. massive amounts of data.
NetDocuments is a content management company that provides cloud document management and collaboration solutions for law firms, financial services and other businesses. NetDocuments was one of the world's first true SaaS enterprise applications launching in 1999 and all of its functionality can be accessed through a web browser on any device including the iPad, iPhone and Android-based devices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetDocuments
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Re: The need to pay for online data backups?

Post by patrick »

magellan wrote:I think the opposite is happening - even the lowest performing machines are incredibly powerful. There's always a price point where you get the most bang for your buck and that's where corporate buyers tend to buy. In 2005, the business laptop sweet spot was around $2k. By 2009, it had dropped to around $1200. Now it seems to be around $800. I don't think anything has really changed except that the entire price/performance curve continues to shift down. Low-end consumer grade computers with i3 processors now cost only $300-500, and are incredibly powerful compared to top-end machines of just a few years ago. So IMO, companies choosing an $800 laptop with an i7 processor are at roughly the same point on the price/performance curve as they've always been. They're certainly not dumbing down employee machines because they need less cpu horsepower.
I wondered how well today's low end compared to older high end, so I looked up some benchmarks and it doesn't seem like today's low end is all that powerful.

For example, looking for an i3 based PC on dell.com the one I find in Best-Selling Desktops uses a i3-2120. Looking at the benchmarks here the 4 year old Core2 Quad Q6650 is slightly faster. And if you compare on graphics capabilities, the Radeon HD 3870, also available 4 years ago, has more than 2.6 times the power of the Core i3 (I jumped up to the i3-2125 here since i3-2120 isn't in the graphics list).

However, I suspect that complaints about lower powered computers today aren't really directed at the Core i3 but rather much weaker processors. For instance, Dell's best-selling desktop list also includes Celeron G460 based PCs that have less than a third of the processing power of the Core i3 model, and underperform the top CPU of 6 years ago. And it gets even worse if you look at the low end netbooks.
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