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On 11/10/12 13:35, Simon Avery wrote: > >>> Thin clients seem rather redundant when we consider "cloud computing" & the Web. >> Isn't the whole point of "cloud computing" that you have a "thin client" ? > Kind of, but it's one of those terms that is so often abused it can mean > everything - including running apps locally and keeping data remotely. It is a > marketing term, after all. > > Personally I have two significant issues with cloud computing. > > 1. My data is owned and controlled by somebody else. As has already happened, a > cloud provider went bust, businesses relying on them lost access to their data. > Add to that the risk of confidentiality being exposed and you have a fairly > dangerous situation as far as control and access goes. > > 2. I live in devon. I manage data and IT for five distinct sites. Only one is > within a town. Four have internet connections that are way below the national > average, ranging between 1.0mbit down and 256 up, and 3.5/0.768. On that I > struggle to serve basic web access to my users (using two outbounds at the busiest > site). Modern adsl is actually quite reliable nowadays - far better than the isdn > we had before - but it's far too slow to be putting our data out there. I host our > own email too, which is great for keeping control, but does mean an admin and > hardware overhead. But that said, I'm fairly sure I'd still like to keep control > of it in my own hands even if we had the bandwidth to host it "out there > somewhere". > > There's no doubt cloudiness has its place, but anyone responsible for data should > think very carefully before handing it over to someone else. > > Si > Agreed, Look at mega upload, it was being used for legit purposes but got caught up in the illigal file sharing accusations and people lost their legit data as a result at least locally you can store the data securely, control who has access to it, control backups and more importantly when dealing with children you need to make sure that confidentiality is maintained admins are appropriately screened etc. Are the people at the cloud company crb checked, what would happen if they had a folder with pictures created by children with their names on, (what happens if you have financial data on the cloud and someguilty of fraud or blackmail gets hold of it) on the server, who would see them, the risk level is too high. If the server is not in the UK it adds a extra level of safeguarding issues to the whole equation as well as some countries may not be as stringent on data protection as the UK. Paul -- -- http://drupal.zleap.net skype : psutton111 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/paul-sutton/36/595/911 http://www.raspberrypi.org http://www.ubuntu.com -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq