Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Cloud is not as safe as you think it is.

We have all been taken in by the romance of the Cloud. Not longer do we require terrabytes of storage for our documents, hooked up to our desktop computers. This has been one of the most important steps in freeing us from the shackles of our desktop machines, bringing about the rise of the laptop/tablet/notebook/iDevice/miniwhatever.

IBM Cloud Computing

But, and it’s a very big but, is all that information you’re transmitting and sharing through the Cloud as safe as you think it is? Short answer: no.

Take, for example, the case of Dan Tynan. Dan was one of hundreds of people using the Cloud to store and share files for work purposes. Through sheer bad luck and a series of seemingly minor errors, his entire cloud-based drive was deleted. In a flash, his entire collection of work documents disappeared. Not only would this have cause hours and dollars in trying to reinstate all the documents, but he could also have been held in breach of contracts he had with companies who included clauses stating he was required to hold onto documents for a period of time, in case of a lawsuit.

Well, surely this couldn’t happen to anyone? It’s just a rare occurrence, I hear you say. Ha!

Between operating system updates deleting your back-ups, the Cloud being blamed for loss of jobs, messy court cases over who actually owns data and if anyone actually has the responsibility of returning data, and Symantec “discovering” that apparently 43% of users lose data in the Cloud, it’s little wonder that more and more people are choosing to turn away from cloud-based computing and return to physical and local storage of data.

Sure, it may not be “cool”. It may mean having to organise an off-site backup for really really important data, just in case. It may even mean investing in a fire-proof, water-proof safe for storing … *shudder* … back up copies, but anything has to be safer than someone you have never met having control over your information.

Things I Believe In.

This is an incomplete list of some of the things I believe in. There’s no real point to this post, other than to categorise myself as someone with a very complicated belief system and perhaps let others realise that their belief systems don’t have to necessarily make sense when viewed as a group.

I believe science has done good, and bad.

Image

Image credits – Flickr: J J “Macys-Believe”

Scientific advancements have done some incredible things for society. It has also done some very bad things for humanity. Take the atom bomb for instance. It started as an endeavour by Einstein to produce essentially free, seemingly inexhaustible energy for the world. Then it got turned into one of the most destructive forces on the planet. Now, some might say that it was the human factor that turned good into bad. I’m still undecided on this opinion. I think that yes humans were definitely the factor that led to the atom bomb, but it was also the human factor that developed the idea for good in the first place.

I believe in the universal divine.

I think there is an essence of divinity in everything. Everything. Every human being, every animal, every plant, the sky, the sea, the dirt, cars, buildings. Everything. Everything is a reflection of a facet that which created it, and so there is a sense of magic and beauty in that that just cannot be explained… yet. Perhaps science will lead to this answer. I’m just not sure that I would necessarily want the answer presented to me. I’m sure I would embrace it and find a way to coalesce it into my belief system, but all the same – I like to hold onto the childlike naivety that belief in something beyond myself provides.

I believe all knowledge is worth having.

Good. Bad. Indifferent. All knowledge is worth having, or having access to. With more knowledge, you are better positioned to make better decisions regarding yourself and others around you. Lack of knowledge can lead to poor choices that have far reaching ramifications beyond what you can possible foresee. Even the information that makes you sad at the time of gaining is worth having. Would I want to know if a partner was cheating on me? Absolutely! Would it make me happy to know it? Definitely not. IS the knowledge worth having? 100% yes! Having that knowledge would allow me to be better positioned to make a decision regarding the continuation or discontinuation of the relationship, based on other information regarding the situation.

I believe that climate change real, but that humans didn’t cause it.

Sure, our activity on the planet – burning fossil fuels, digging the face of the planet to pieces- certainly didn’t help abate the process of global warming. I think it was inevitable that the climate of the planet was going to change, as it has in the past, but that human activity has sped up the arrival. I see people who deny that climate change is real and that they shouldn’t have to change their ways as idiots. How is changing your habits and consumption to make the planet a better place a bad thing ever?! Using less, recycling and reusing more is only going to make the world and humanity better. With such a small percentage of the population using such a large percentage of the world’s resources, it just seems senseless to argue that you shouldn’t have to change your habits to benefit someone else. Leaving the world a better place for generations to come is a good thing, regardless of whether or not it will affect the degree to which climate change occurs.