On 05/19/2012 04:07 AM, Christopher Tooley wrote:
Thought I would chime in here.
Also, I didn't mention this because I thought it was obvious, but you
don't exactly mount the Google Drive. Its basically like a
feature-deprived version of Dropbox with an even worse privacy policy
that only integrates with Google products. It is absolutely not
available offline -- and actual syncing has to be a deliberate choice,
every time, so actually saving to a local drive you own for real is not
automatic or even reasonably hassle-free. So this sort of sucks.
If you don't have a google drive client, this is correct. This means all linux,
currently, but google drive on Mac and Windows appears to be almost exactly
like dropbox, save for any differences in licensing issues - sync looks to me
to be automatic on the mac, and is as painless as dropbox.
Maybe we were given a stunted version to test, but on Google's own OS
and Mac OSX we had to deliberately drag drop each file that we wanted
saved to the local computer for access offline. Sync as a concept was
merely that the contents of the drive space are visible from anywhere,
but the data is on Google's machines, *not* actually synced to the local
drive.
In other words local possession and sync of your files is an illusion
that fails once the network connection drops.. or Google randomly closes
your account like this:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/hardware/why-you-shouldnt-trust-google-or-any-cloud-service-with-your-data-update/13860
because a TOS validation algorythm put you in the wrong category. (Or
decides the applications infrastructure you've used to manipulate your
content constitutes something bad and wipes your stuff:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/facebook-bans-kde-applications-deletes-photos-uploaded-with-them/1766
)
Dropbox works fantastically with Scientific Linux, and it's been around for a
while now. There's also sparkleshare, which is uses git to coordinate between
your own computers. Dunno how well that works for people, but it's open source
and doesn't look like it requires a central server ala google drive or dropbox.
Sparkleshare:
http://sparkleshare.org/
Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/home
These are interesting services, but I think they miss the point of one
data view and don't even begin to address architectural integration --
which is what would really fix data sync problems. Actually, everyone
has tossed the concept of one data view at the architecture level
(yeah, when was the last time you read architecture and data sharing
in the same sentence?) because if people have control over their own
data then nobody can charge rent from them on their own stuff; whether
that's by reselling consumers' existences and whatever they feel like
from their data store (Google), selling tie-ins (Dropbox), or actually
charging rent from them on their own stuff (Microsoft and Amazon).
