On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 14:09:56 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
On 2 April 2013 13:52, mick mbm@rlogin.net wrote:
On Tue, 2 Apr 2013 10:07:51 +0100 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk allegedly wrote:
Killing dropbox resulted in an instant drop of CPU usage from 100% to 0%.
So. One more reason not to use Dropbox then.
Dropbox has one advantage over its competition: I got 50GB free with my phone. However, given that I'm not even close to the free 2GB usage yet that's a bit meaningless. What would you recommend as an alternative? Minimum requirement is clients for Linux, Windows and Android, with obviously the ability to sync but also to share certain files/directories between users.
Actually, none of the so-called "cloud" backup-up/sharing/syncing products, and for a bunch of reasons. Firstly, the architectural/usability issue of having to have a fast internet connection always available. 50Gig of store is no damned good to me at the end of an ADSL line which has an upload speed of around 0.4 Mbps (and of course is completely useless in the absence of a connection). Pity people like Tony who have to rely on 3G connectivity. Now give me 10 Mbps in both directions and I /might/ reconsider.
Secondly, I /really/ dislike the idea of giving my data (and metadata about my connections) to some unknown (and decidedly untrusted) third party. Most of the EULA's I have read mean that I surrrender my rights to that data. And what happens if they go bust, or just refuse me access at a later date? Sure I coould get around some of that by having a decent paid for contract, but I recall reading that only around 2-3% of "customers" actually pay rather than take the freebee, and as the man said. "if you ain't paying, then you are the product".
Thirdly, I just don't trust the other party not to a) snoop on my data, b) give my data to a third party (or to a snoopy government official), b) keep my data secure from unauthorised access by malicious insiders or outsiders. Here Dropbox are one of the worst offenders. They lied about applying AES 256 bit encyption of the data at rest (they later admitted that they would pass the data /unencrypted/ to a federal agency on receipt of a court summons. - How does that work then?). They have lost user emails following a breach of an employee's account, and a failure in their on-line authentication mechanism exposed user's files to the whole world a year or so ago.
Sure I could get around the snooping problem by encrypting my own data (as you say you do), but that won't help me if I want to sync data (such as firefox offers to do with your bookmarks) rather than simply store and share data.
I confess to an "old skool" prejudice to wanting to be able to "touch" my data (or at least to know where the hell it is). Even though I run my own mail server on a VM, I am bloody minded enough to actually download the mail to my local store (and back it up to separate NAS boxes) rather than leave it on the server and access it via IMAP.
Mick
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