Comments on: Who Ya Gonna Call? App Busters!

By: Drstrangelove

Drstrangelove — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:09:11 +0000

Not only are there companies still running Windows98 for critical applications. There are many retail stores still using OS/2 to control their air handlers. Could you imagine the costs of upgrading the software and hardware in a national retail chain of 300 or more locations? Not to mention the costs of retraining the service providers. All so the temperature can be maintained. If it ain’t broken, don’t fix it. Hell, I still use an old server running 4 Pentium pro processors as my firewall and print server. (I found it next to a dumpster 8 years ago) I’d rather save my money than throw it away on beveled windows, widgets, and a system that looks prettier. As for cloud computing; I’ll be the last one on earth to still keep my files and software where it will be secure.

By: Julian Cook

Julian Cook — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 18:46:32 +0000

The comments referencing data escrow have caught my eye. I work for an ISV called RainStor that launched a cloud archive service a few months ago. We’ve focused on delivering application retirement solutions initially that allow companies to preserve historical data from legacy applications in the cloud. However, we’ve also been asked by customers, partners, commentators, analysts etc. etc. how our cloud archive service can be used for “SaaS data escrow”. There seems a real and immediate need!

We’re keen to understand in more detail why and how companies might use cloud archive services to keep a copy of the data within their SaaS applications so we’re running a survey. The survey is available at http://tinyurl.com/kl5l86 and the results are available to anyone who particpates.

By: renaissance chambara alias Ged Carroll - When the cloud goes bad

renaissance chambara alias Ged Carroll - When the cloud goes bad — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:01:23 +0000

[...] Cringely wrote an interesting article about what to do if a web-based service (you may also hear of it described as cloud computing or SaaS) sto…. What happens to your data? The article argues that once you licence most software, so long as you [...]

By: Ramon Thomas

Ramon Thomas — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:08:21 +0000

Come on Bob! You can do better than this. It's old news because Richard Stallman raised the alarm bells about cloud computing back in September 2008 already.

By: Ramon Thomas

Ramon Thomas — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:07:23 +0000

Come on Bob! This is old news. Richard Stallman raised the alarm bells in September 2008 already. Checkout this article from The Guardian.

By: Dr. Kenneth Noisewater

Dr. Kenneth Noisewater — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:29:26 +0000

Heh, speaking of stalking, I remember an old VAX script that had the inventory of public serial terminals indexed by port, so that you could put in your friends’ VAX userids and get their physical location if they were logged into a campus VT terminal.. I ended up writing a ’stalker’ script which took that index and basically reversed the hash so that keys became values and vice-versa, though VAX batch scripting didn’t really have a paradigm for it… So it became “select the lab and console, and I’ll tell you who’s logged in there”… .plans, talkd, all that stuff reinvented for teh internets..

(get off my lawn!)

By: John

John — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:05:29 +0000

Many years ago when I first joined the workforce, a coworker was locked up in a conference room for 6 months with the assignment to xerox a copy of every document on a particular product. It seems someone was suing the company and the lawyers wanted every tidbit of information the company had.

In one memo out of 1000’s someone made a joke about the product. The plaintiff’s lawyers took the comment as an admission of the company knowing there was something wrong with the product. That joke cost the company a ton of time and money in proving the comment was only a joke and without any basis in fact.

That led to a new company policy — document retention rules. If there is not a legal or business reason to keep something, get rid of it after 6 months. Twice a year everyone in the company was required to stop working for a couple hours and go through every one of their files, and throw away what was no longer needed.

A few years ago, while working for a different company a coworker calls me with a concern. He is working with a customer who has some rather unusual email retention rules. No emails are saved for more than 3 days. If you were on vacation, tough, its gone. All emails are deleted after being opened. The customer wanted us to make sure none of the deleted emails could be recovered from the unused bits on the server disk drives. They wanted to to set up a disk-wipe feature on their email system. That company happened to be a big Houston based energy trading firm that got into a lot of trouble several years ago. My coworker friend, who never worked for this company found himself as a material witness and was locked up with the lawyers for years. Thanks to this firm we have the Sarbanes Oxley Act and corporations can never delete their email.

If you in-source your email, what if Exchange version 21 can’t read version 5 databases when the lawyers come calling? What if someone changed your email system, how are you going to read those old HP OpenMail messages? If you outsource your email, are you sure your service provider will keep your email forever? (and keep you out of Sarbanes Oxley jail) What if they don’t? What if they don’t do a good job of protecting your email and someone exposes something sensitive? What if you are a private citizen, do you want someone keeping your email forever?

The permutations of this problem boggle the imagination.

By: ECDomain Article Directory » I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Who Ya Gonna Call? App Busters …

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:57:56 +0000

[...] here to see the original: I, Cringely » Blog Archive » Who Ya Gonna Call? App Busters … No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this post)SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “I, Cringely » [...]

By: Ajay

Ajay — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:14:49 +0000

I think what we’ll see in the future is data banks, just as we store our cash in banks today for storage and easy access. You’ll keep all your application data in a databank online that you control through the databank company’s interface, and online stores and social networks and others will simply access your databank for your data everytime you load up an app. The latency between the app servers and your databank will be trivial as they’re all backbone connected, and this way you can control your data, keeping it forever and controlling access/privacy. For large datasets, the databank will provide standardized and carefully controlled VMs where the app providers can crunch data while conserving privacy. The current data model is akin to the early days of commerce when banks didn’t exist, databanks will emerge just like banks did.

By: Carl H. Blomqvist

Carl H. Blomqvist — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 21:02:07 +0000

Yeah, I think that all sites that holds user created content, shuld offer that data (with code) at for an example Internet Archive. Actually I think it should be a law that requires these types of companies to do so.

Just my 2 cents.