Comments on: Amazon Kindle outage: The perils of cloud computing for e-book-lovers

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 20:21:35 +0000

1. Heck, Roland, my viewpoint is far from “totally negative.” The first words in the post were, “I love the idea of cloud computing…” And the practice. I just don’t want it to be the only choice for regular books. I’m willing to be more flexible in the case of networked books.

2. It’s a lot easier for an arrogant government to take down a cloud computing arrangement than to send cops into millions of our homes to seize our books.

Thanks,
David

By: Roland Dobbins

Roland Dobbins — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 19:07:23 +0000

Nothing’s wrong with it – I was just providing a balanced counter-argument to your totally negative take on the cloud, heh.

And by the bye, the government will do whatever they want, on whatever pretext, with regards to self-owned/operated infrastructure, as well. This risk isn’t cloud-specific.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 18:59:06 +0000

Roland, I couldn’t agree more that the big boys are doing many good things. But what’s wrong with both approaches–remote and local storage? People want control over their own books. If nothing else, they worry that the government could do some nasty things in the future in the name of fighting terrorism or child porn.

Thanks,
David

By: Roland Dobbins

Roland Dobbins — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:43:09 +0000

The big boys tend to follow the well-accepted BCPs which mitigate the risk of DDoS, avoid single points of failure, fate-sharing, and so forth. When they don’t, it becomes readily apparent, and they fix it.

Most SP infrastructures are vastly more secure and resilient than most enterprise and individually-owned/operated infrastructures, and cloud computing will only accelerate this trend. Indeed, one of the prime motivators behind cloud computing is that the complexity, expense, and skillsets required to maximize uptime and minimize service disruptions, as well as protect against penetration attempts and other forms of compromise, is simply beyond the grasp of most enterprise organizations, and so they’re far better off turning those worries over to SMEs who can do a much better job at it, while focusing on their own internal core competencies and actual businesses.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:36:34 +0000

Thanks, Roland, but the warning isn’t so against the CURRENT Amazon arrangement, under which the damage was limited because of the emphasis on books on files.

No, I’m looking ahead to the time when damages from outages could be much greater because of a heavy reliance on cloud computing.

Meanwhile your current references to USB, etc., reinforce what I’ve said about the advantages of files at the owners’ end.

Thanks,
David

By: Roland Dobbins

Roland Dobbins — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 16:22:48 +0000

What hyperbole, heh. If the Sprint wireless is down, you can still read your books – and you can still purchase books from Amazon, download them to your computer, then copy them over to your Kindle via USB.

I spend 100% of my time outside the Sprint coverage area, and buy all my Kindle (and other, compatible) ebooks in this fashion – except when I use Mobile Safari to buy them and then download them via my non-Sprint iPhone 3G connection.

Amazon have a very robust infrastructure, and their entire business is at risk if they have a massive outage, so they spend a lot of time and money working to ensure its resiliency. Nothing and no one is perfect, but having owned my Kindle since November 18th, 2007, I’ve never been unable to purchase a Kindle book at whim, nor have I been unable to read my purchased Kindle (or compatible) ebooks at any time.