[LINK] Of Walled Gardens and Their Dangers

[Frank O'Connor]

Mmmmm,

Same with Apple Maverick and the iCloud ... not a lot of mention of it until after you had installed.

I think the plan is to sneakily get you onto the Cloud, and justify same by pointing out the 'extreme amounts' of storage you’re getting for nothing (Wow! A Whole 5 GIGABYTES!!!!!!), whilst relying on the fact that what you are provided for free wouldn't even store 1/4 of the average person's content ... that is if they didn't have any movies or too many songs/MP3's.

Then there's the "But you can access it anywhere!" justification ... which makes light of the fact that if you invest in even a reasonable amount of storage on any 'puter or device you tend to have more than enough to carry it all with you - faster, cheaper and more securely.

They want us on their Cloud ... by hook or by crook. They make moolah by analysing our behaviours and selling to us based on them, on renting out ever cheaper Cloud storage, on 'royalties' businesses like telcos must be paying them for storing data, content and applications which travel on their networks - incurring horrifically expensive data charges to the telcos on the way ("Like another 10 gig on the monthly plan, Sir? That'll be an extra $100) ... from the Cloud ... In fact, with the Cloud everyone wins, except of course the consumer. Let's call him Mr MoneyPot from now on.

And given that the NSA and others with even more nefarious motives are no doubt plugged into the Cloud(s), I wonder whether Microsoft or Apple would offer me a solid indemnity against their snooping and the consequences of said snooping. I mean, they're supposed to be servicing our needs and interests aren't they? 

And is it OK for Apple and Microsoft and other Cloud suppliers to onsell my data to nameless third parties who may be interested in it. I mean, if not, why are they getting me to sign off on these onerous 40-400 page'Terms of Service' at the click of a button after I've had three seconds to analyse said Terms.

I'm with you BRD ... the Cloud is currently an unfinished solution with little in the way of safeguards and security still searching for a problem to solve.

At the moment ... I don't want any part of it.

Just my 2 cents worth.
---
On 1 Nov 2013, at 4:08 pm, Bernard Robertson-Dunn <brd at iimetro.com.au> wrote:

> On 1/11/2013 2:19 PM, Frank O'Connor wrote:
>> The lessons are:
>> 1. Avoid 'walled gardens' - no matter how convenient, ostensibly useful and comfortable they are.
> 
> I recently upgraded my Win8 tablet to Win8.1 and nearly got trapped in 
> Microsoft's Walled garden. The upgrade seems to insist on a Microsoft 
> Account which I foolishly set up, thinking there was no alternative.
> 
> When the system had finished, I discovered that my tablet was attached 
> to Microsoft's cloud by an umbilical cord. The system had manged to get 
> me to change my account name and password, which was now stored in the 
> cloud. Changing my password meant logging onto Microsoft first. Not my 
> idea of a good idea. It would seem that Microsoft wants to keep all your 
> data in the cloud so you can get at it from any device. IMHO, making 
> data easier for me to get at means that it is also easier for others to 
> get at.
> 
> I won't bore you with the details but I managed to free myself from the 
> cloud and re-establish the tablet as a stand alone device with the 
> original account name and password and with all installed applications 
> working OK. It took some effort and cunning and taught me to be very 
> careful in future.
> 
> My advice to anyone thinking of upgrading to Win8.1 is to get onto the 
> web and research before doing so. There are ways to avoid falling into 
> Microsoft's cloud trap and I wish I'd done my homework first.
> 
> -- 
> 
> Regards
> brd
> 
> Bernard Robertson-Dunn
> Sydney Australia
> email: brd at iimetro.com.au
> web:   www.drbrd.com
> web:   www.problemsfirst.com
> Blog:  www.problemsfirst.com/blog
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link