Archiving Quicken files-- any purpose

Distributed computing is irrelevent to the discussion, we're talking cloud storage, a different matter.

Not really. In may last job, I was located in Arizona. My data was in California, Colorado, North Carolina, and New York. Some applications were local to my machine. Others were also on the remote servers. Whether it is the data or the applications are being made available from remote computers makes little difference. All of the servers work together to make data and application computing transparently mobile.

From Wikipedia.... Cloud computing is Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

The question asked was "What are some advantages to clouds?" The advantages include the things that I mentioned, including the two points that dealt specifically with data storage. Instantaneous backups at multiple locations, and data available virtually anywhere.

This sounds more like a Virtual Private Network. If all the data is on physical storage devices owned by the company running over the Internet as VPN tunnels -- it's not a "cloud" (OK call it an internal cloud). I was doing this 10 years ago, before "cloud" became the latest, greatest buzzword.

My definition of "cloud" storage involves giving up control of your data to a third party Internet provided (with or without a VPN). You may not even know what country hosts your data. That's why my original comments apply. You can have all the contractual legalease you want, but if the company sells out or the country wants to snoop, you actually have no recourse and may not even be able to retrieve YOUR data.

Your reference to the electricity grid highlights the shared/who really owns question. Who really owns and runs the Internet? That's the rub.

My couple of pennies worth......

Regards, sb

Jim H wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@giganews.com:

No ghe question asked was " Archiving Quicken files-- any purpose", and like so many posts, the question gets lost in massive discussions of OFF-TOPIC subjects. Take the cloud vs distributed computing to a group that is interested. This is about QUICKEN.

So it was ok to post an off-topic comment when you wanted to say something about it ("In my mind, the 'cloud' is still a newfound buzzword ..."); but not ok when someone else does?

If someone dies and leaves you in charge, I'll either leave Usenet, or stay and listen to your orders. Until then, they are like so much piss in the wind.

and this is why I don't do 'cloud' in any way shape or form... even a company like Intuit comes up with this stuff.. as seen in other recent postings on here.. why would anyone use a 'cloud' format .. just makes no sense