Doug's Mailbag: Drunken Love, More Cloud Concerns

It's only the second week of January and we already have a frontrunner for reader e-mail of the year:

Doug, I just want to throw this out there, and if you want, you can send it right back (Anchorman). I really like you. This is kind of like one if those late night texts that should never be sent.

I'm drunk right now, sitting in total darkness in my living room, wife in the room all huffy with the door locked, all cause I told her to "Relax, its not that big of a deal" when she was freaking out because of how carelessly I opened a letter WITH MY NAME ON IT, which I ripped the contents of (which were an invitation to my friends wedding) a tad, (you're on my side right? You better be!) reading your newsletter (on my Android telephone) (this is becoming like a set of nested if statements resulting in a giant run on sentence, sorry to insult your English skills), I doubt this is even comprehensiveable (yeah, new word).  So forget all that.

 What I'm really trying to say is that I really appreciate your newsletters. I read them almost every day on the train on the way to work. And it's pretty awesome that they are free because they are better than the coffee on the train (which I have to pay for). So please, keep up the good work. I could never keep up with the times without my Redmond Report! I'm feeling a little self conscious about what I may have written earlier in this message and kind of want to reread it, but I really have to pee, so I'm not going to.

Bottom line is, delete what you've just read from your memory, and tell yourself "This is why I do what I do" (because people enjoy it, not because of the money, Doug!) ) Sorry for sending this, I realize I should just delete it, but the Jim Beam and Pepsi Max have taken control of my fingers.  To recap, I like you, And I hope you keep writing newsletters until…
-Anonymous

Here's another's take on storing data in the could:

I agree with Dr. Dave's points on cloud computing. Another point concerns businesses that are having financial difficulties in our trying economic times in making payments to their cloud providers. I can see cloud providers using mafia-style extortion or blackmail in holding your data hostage to secure ever-increasing costs to maintain your use of your own data. If you fail to pay, they will erase your data, or sell it to the highest bidder.

Companies are bought and sold regularly. If the Taliban uses a benign overseas company to purchase a cloud provider that has important data, could they use it for their terrorist activities against us? Again, we may need strict government control that would increase costs and plague businesses.

We need to look again at the cost of using the cloud to protect and use our data.
-Alan

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Posted by Doug Barney on 01/12/2011 at 1:18 PM