Bruce Bostwick wrote:
I haven't chimed in on Wave or the more general subject of cloud computing yet, since I haven't used it yet (which, in some people's judgment, makes me ineligible to comment, although I consider that a questionable argument), but my misgivings about it are generally related to the same question of how valid the underlying assumptions are, as well as the overall reliability of the servers the storage lives on.
In terms of specific to Google Wave: for now early adopters should trust Google's storage policies (and considering the vast number of people with Gmail addresses, many do), with the addition of the Google way-early-beta caveat.
In the mid to long term other servers should start to pick up Wave usage. The entire Java source to run your own Wave server is available for use and adaptation and servers talk to each other in similar ways to email servers (so Wave participant addresses right now are things like max.battc...@googlewave.com, which look like email addresses but aren't guaranteed to be one and the same). (More accurately, the server to server protocols are based on the more recent XMPP IM standards rather than decades-old email, but the general idea is the same...)
(It seems to me that a lot of the hype around the cloud computing concept is really thin on details of infrastructure, storage reliability/redundancy and backup maintenance, privacy protection, and a whole range of other unanswered questions I've had about it. And for people who seem so eager to have me store my personal data on their servers, a lot of those unanswered questions are show stoppers for me.)
Well "cloud computing" has come to embody a lot of concepts, generally, and can be anything from marketing droid speak to a beloved panacea from the computing gods... To be honest the term in common parlance doesn't seem to have a very well-defined meaning anymore.
Generally, individual "cloud computing" providers should be able to provide you with all of the details that you need, and your questions are "unanswered", you may not be asking the right people...
All of the services that I use on a daily basis are very forthright with that sort of information and I would say that I have days where I am very paranoid.
It's hard to argue anything at a general "cloud computing" level, and just like any other set of services you have to go into each relationship with some idea of your intent and the company/entity's trustworthiness. Perhaps if you named specific services or concerns your questions might be answered.
-- --Max Battcher-- http://worldmaker.net _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
