On Nov 5, 2007 9:28 PM, Tracy R Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Bob La Quey wrote: > > What is AIS? > > A datacenter. www.americanis.net > > > During the last decade I can only think of one or two times when I > > had anything in email that I would object to being public. > > Ah yes, the old "I'm not doing anything wrong so why should I worry > about privacy?" argument.
Not at all. I did not say I was not doing anything wrong. I just said I would not do it on insecure systems. Note I also did not say I _was_ doing something wrong. That said, I do not have any problem at all with using insecure systems for communications that need not be secure. > > I believe very much in privacy. I just don't use or feel any particular > > need for anything other the rare email message to be private. Others > > situations are no doubt different. > > If the only emails sent with measures taken for privacy are ones that > need to be secret they will surely get read and you will have troubles. > Imagine if everyone in the world is sending their correspondence around > on postcards that anyone can read and you show up at the post office > with a sealed envelope. You are going straight onto the no-fly list. There are many many ways, tried and true, both old and new to send the occasional secure message without calling attention to oneself. Surely you know this. > > This is a non-starter. Your business is probably dependent upon a huge > > web of other businesses for its success. The question is not _if_ one > > will depend on other businesses but _what_ will one choose to farm out. > > But we are not singly dependent on any one of them. Who do you buy your electricity from? Your water? Who provides your streets? Fire protection? Basic security against physical crimes? As web services grow and become more competitive you need not be singly dependent upon any of them. As it is you are recommending a policy of being singly dependent upon in house services. Not a good idea IMHO. > Except perhaps > Microsoft. And you know I'm fighting that one wherever possible. If our > ISP takes a dump we can get another one. If our janitor service quits we > can get another one. If all of our information is stored at Google and > something happens such that we no longer have access we are just SOL. So Google is your "bete noir." Not my idea to put everything in any business as dependent on Google either. So on that we agree. Nor is it my position to be dependent upon in-house equivalent servcies either. > > Example money. Does your business depend on money? Do you use > > a bank? Why do you trust a bank to take care of your money? > > Banks are historically trustworthy in the US. Hmm .. we could debate that depending on the time frame but I will let is slide. > Software companies are historically untrustworthy. As were banks not so long ago. Even as recently as a few decades ago ... one finds "This paper summarizes our analysis of 171 national banks that failed between 1979 and 1987." http://oae.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/3/3/255 > But who says I keep all of my money in one > bank anyway? Diversification is not a bad idea in that sense. And who says you must use only one web service? It seems we agree that diversification and avoiding a single point of failure is a good idea. You seem to feel this means "do it yourself." I am far from convinced. Far too few companies actually have the competence to do this. They become their own single point of failure. I would bet on Google as being less likely to fail than the vast majority of company data systems. My bet is that Google is vastly more competent than say 90% of the IT departments of say the Fortune 1000. > > I could rant on but I think you get the point. A business needs to > > determine what it has to add that has value and focus on that. > > You could rant all night and still be just as wrong. :) So do you think it is wrong to say, "A business needs to determine what it has to add that has value and focus on that."? ;) BobLQ -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
